


THE ANCHORS ARCHIVE

by Teumessian



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels & Guides, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Science Fiction, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:14:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22778539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teumessian/pseuds/Teumessian
Summary: In a world where the machinations of the world are influenced by superhumans known as sentinels, the bonds of two units will be tested. Strength and power hang by a tenuous thread, when right, wrong, happiness, and fulfillment are all fragile and subjective.This archive contains the accounts of five members of the International Sentinel Bureau and detailed descriptions of the events that led to Operation Mourningfall.
Relationships: Carter Hart/Travis Konecny/Nolan Patrick, Other Relationships, Sidney Crosby/Evgeni Malkin, Travis Konecny/Nolan Patrick
Comments: 28
Kudos: 64





	1. FILE 001

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually a rewrite and re-release of a fic I began posting when I very first got into Hockey RPF. I grew out of some of the parings and it fell off, but I adored the concept so much that I had to dive back in. This is a loose Sentinel/Guide AU, and takes place in a unique alternate universe. Many, many liberties were taken.
> 
> Other places liberties were taken was in character age and current affiliation. 
> 
> The characters in this story are based upon the publicly presented images of real people and in no way reflects the opinions or actions of the real people that characters were based upon. This was written with the intent of existing in fan spaces only. 
> 
> Thank you so much to both of my amazing beta readers <3 Enjoy the story!

**_You are the light that is guiding me  
_** **_You are the anchor that I’ve tied to my brain  
_ ** **_And when I feel like I’m lost at sea  
_ ** **_You’re the song I sing again and again_ **

**_All the time  
_** **_All the time  
_ ** **_I_ ** **_think of you all the time  
_ ** **_All the time  
_ ** **_All the time  
_ ** **_I think of you all the time..._ **

**THE ANCHORS ARCHIVE.  
** **FILE 001.**

* * *

**MARCH 2020** – INTERNATIONAL SENTINEL BUREAU – PITTSBURGH FACILITY

The Pittsburgh Sentinel Facility’s mess hall is crowded at midday on a Saturday when Sidney arrives. Sentinels, guides, and other agents roll in en masse from morning work and trainings. Groups of staff have already posted up around the room, filling their plates before the ravenous sentinels can empty out the best lunch options. It looks like there’s a pretty high number of field units on site between missions, and the older prospects from the youth facility are present for their own trainings. 

The range of activity varies greatly from table to table. There’s a quiet pair nearby in Vancouver blues whom Sid guesses are in layover, probably returning from a mission overseas if the weary way they lean into each other is anything to go by. The sentinel’s hand is closed around the wrist of his guide as he eats with one hand. A group of energetically debating ops technicians sits a table over, including Flower, who sends a jaunty wave in Sid’s direction. The prospects sit along the back wall, some look numb with the exhaustion of the morning’s drills and others look a bit overwhelmed at the sight of so many fully fledged sentinels and operatives. Where they sit on that line is directly connected to how long each of them has been in the program, Sid knows, though he can’t completely empathize. The program had been so much smaller when he was a prospect, and he honestly can’t remember the first time he came to the main facility. He thinks he was five. Perhaps younger, if Mario had brought him by personally, not that Sid would remember. 

Forks and knives clatter against plates. The smells of grilled chicken, steamed broccoli, seedy bread, bacteria cultures inside yoghurt, the little bit of cinnamon that the cook uses in the oatmeal – dirt, sweat, hormones – all swirl through the air. Voices rise and fall, hundreds of words bouncing off the walls. The yellow accents on the Pittsburgh regulation gear are stark even with the light pouring in from the high windows. Thousands and thousands of stimuli bombard Sid – but at the forefront is the subtle heat of one specific human body behind him, a metronome of a single breathing pattern, the feeling of one finger on his elbow as Sid turns towards the food line. 

“What you want, Sid? I get, you find seat.” 

Zhenya doesn’t speak loudly, but his guide’s voice easily slides right over the commotion and directly to Sid. 

“The usual is fine,” Sid says, even though there’s no set menu – Zhenya will know what to get for him. 

Sid picks an open table on the far end of the room with a clear sight line to the mess hall doors. He taps out a rhythm on the wood tabletop, matching the pace of Zhenya’s heartbeat, which is still clear to him across the room. Sid runs over this morning’s drills in his head as he waits as a means to avoid rudely eavesdropping on any of the conversations around him. He could listen in on the two young prospects whispering to each other across the room if he wanted to, but he doesn’t and it’s easy to filter the stimuli out before processing it. Sid checks back in when he hears Zhenya’s voice through the crowd.

“One cookie for Sid.”

“That still means you have _three._ Not cool, man,” a rookie sentinel named Lafferty complains as Zhenya deposits the last four cookies onto his tray. 

His guide, also young and recently cleared for active duty, Marino, stands behind them, looking equally put out. 

“You have last cookies when your field record better than mine,” Zhenya tells the sentinel with a gleeful smile.

Sid snorts. Together he and Zhenya, _the Monster_ as their field tag denotes, have the best record of any pair in the entirety of the Sentinel Program. By himself, Zhenya’s field record actually ranks him above almost every field agent, and even a few sentinels in the program – a fact that he _never_ lets them forget. 

“You know,” Marino chimes in, “Guides don’t really need to be focusing on their own field stats. It’s their sentinel’s and the unit’s that matter.”

Sid hears Zhenya’s heartbeat speed a little with happiness as he turns to Marino.

“Good point, rookie. Ok, then _you_ get last cookies when Lafferty’s record better than Sid’s,” Zhenya says, and then turns away, laughing as he goes, leaving the pair groaning in his wake. 

Zhenya’s still smiling when he sits down across from Sid, who can’t help but grin back. The plate Zhenya sets down in front of Sid is filled with two chicken breasts, a hearty green salad mixed with quinoa, and a giant bowl of greek yoghurt with some sort of hearty grain stirred in. One cookie rests on the edge of his plate. Sid usually avoids sweets, but Zhenya knows he has a soft spot for chocolate chip.

“Why do you give them so much trouble?” Sid asks as he cuts into the chicken. “They show a ton of promise and had great scores before they went active.”

Geno downs his cup of apple juice in one go, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. 

“I know. Just want make sure they don’t get big heads,” Zhenya says which makes Sid huff out a laugh. 

“You look at the mission file yet?” Sid asks.

They got the message in after training this morning. Zhenya nods, pulling a small tablet out of his pocket and unlocking it. He slides it across to Sid. 

“Two team mission,” Zhenya says, which makes Sid raise his brows a bit.

They work with other teams on occasion, but it always means the job is either really big or someone paid a _lot_ of money to have two sentinel teams deployed. 

“Ukraine?” Sid says as he skims.

“Data recovery,” Zhenya confirms. 

Sid keeps reading and then he frowns. Zhenya catches the change immediately, no doubt knowing exactly what Sid just read. 

“They good, Sid. Some of best, even if unpaired,” Zhenya says, ripping a piece off his peanut butter toast.

Sid doesn’t reply, just fights the tightening in his chest as he reads the mission file.

 **Deploy Teams:** **_The Monster, Teeks+Patty_ **

* * *

**MARCH 2020** – I.S.B. – PHILADELPHIA FACILITY

There’s a funny sound in the pipes. The water pressure is increasing right above the meeting room, like there might be some sort of build up narrowing the pipe right there. The irregularity sticks out like a sore thumb, the simple _shhhhhhh_ blacking out everything else. 

_Shhhhh._

_Shhhhhhhhhh._

_Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh –_

“Patty!”

Nolan blinks. The room around him comes back into focus. A young woman sits in the chair across the table from him. Nolan can see Claude behind him in the reflection of what he knows is a two-way mirror. Beyond it he can still hear the quiet sounds of scientists making notes. Nolan cranes his neck back to look at Claude.

“Well, considering I just zoned in the room with her, I doubt we’re particularly compatible,” Nolan deadpans. 

It makes the woman laugh at least. She’s an ISB agent in with a team from California. They always run willing agents through this process when they visit the Philadelphia Facility. He knows that agents with tested guide potential are used to this process. They do it at any Facility with unpaired sentinels, but it’s on another level for Nolan.

He tips his chair back on its legs as the woman gets up. 

“Sorry. Good luck,” she says kindly as she goes to the door. 

The next one comes in right after her. It’s a man in his mid-thirties with dark hair and a hoodie that reads _International Sentinel Bureau._ Nolan never understands why they made swag like that when it isn’t allowed off Facility grounds. Not that people don’t know the ISB exists, but you can hardly brag about being part of the global peacekeeping agency that runs _secret_ operations all over the world. The man sits down and opens his mouth, presumably to introduce himself. 

“No,” Nolan says before he can get it out. 

He can feel G rolling his eyes, but he also dutifully thanks the agent for his time. The man leaves with a chuckle. Nolan might have a bit of a reputation. 

“You could at least give them more than ten seconds each, Pat,” Giroux says, making a note on his tablet. 

“Talk to me when you’ve been through four hundred and eighteen of these,” Nolan says, never forgetting the exact number of potential guides they’ve thrown him in a room with. “You’ve only had to endure these for a year.” 

“Yeah, and yet you and Teeks alone make me wish I’d stayed in the field,” Claude says.

“You saw a lot of me then, too,” Nolan points out.

Claude acted as a field handler for him and Travis for years, and Nolan’s known him for even longer besides. 

“Yeah, but you’re much less of a pain in the ass in the field.”

Nolan shrugs as G locks the tablet and puts the stylus away. 

“That the last of them?”

“Yeah, you can go, but wait around until Teeks’s out,” G says – unnecessarily. Nolan always waits. “You’ve got a mission in, by the way.”

That raises Nolan’s spirits as he heads through the door and into the observation room across the hall. The techs don’t say much when Nolan enters. Instead they keep staring at monitors or through the glass into the room where Travis sits across from the young woman Nolan met only a few minutes ago. Travis’ gaze flicks away from her and towards the glass. He doesn’t doubt Travis knows someone’s entered the room, but wonders if he knows that it’s Nolan. Probably. 

Nolan leans against a table and watches as Travis refocuses on the conversation he’s having with the ISB operative. Travis always runs through a quick set of questions with them, gives them a solid three minutes each where Nolan can’t even be bothered anymore. 

They both used to give each interview their all. Nolan remembers leaning across the table, focusing intently on each new person. Muttering to the observer in the room, _‘I… I think I might feel something? Maybe?’_ They’d move on to true compatibility testing, in the hopes of making it to lab testing, but nobody ever made it past the active tests. Four years later, Patty’s desperation has long run out. He’s pretty sure there wouldn’t be any kind of _maybe_ if someone with actual match potential walked through the door. 

Travis finishes up his line of questioning and then shakes his head with a little twist to his lips. His coordinator excuses the woman. He thanks her for meeting him and the man enters as she leaves. 

Rinse. Repeat. 

Patty swipes Travis’ tablet off the table where he’d left it and uses his own thumbprint to get into the interface. It’s more colorful than most people’s, fewer words, more symbols. He flicks over to the message icon and opens up the mission file. It sounds like a good job.

And he can’t help but smirk when he sees who else is assigned. 

_“Fuck,_ Patty…”

The words leave Travis’s lips unbidden. One of his hands is clasped around the headboard and one is twisted into Nolan’s hair as the other sentinel tries to suck out his soul through his dick. Travis’s breath comes rapidly, chest slick from both the weight training that Nolan pulled him away from and the way they’d wrestled each other into bed. He’s pretty sure he’d have bruises if there weren’t a superhuman serum running through his veins. 

“I’m close,” Travis gasps – which is of course when Nolan digs his thumbs into the crease where his legs meet his hips. 

It hurts, tickles like a bitch, and Patty is a fucking asshole. 

“Shit!” he says, knees snapping up as Nolan pulls off his dick. _“Why?”_

Nolan laughs, shrugging as if to say _why not?_ He jacks Travis loosely and sucks a temporary mark into his inner thigh. Travis releases the headboard so he can grab at Nolan, pulling him up the bed to slam their mouths together and align their hips. The kiss is all teeth and tongue and rough hands that feel like fire on Travis’s skin. He rolls them over, grinding their hips together. 

He plants his knees into the mattress when Nolan slides a hand between them, taking them both in hand. He bites at Nolan’s neck and groans when he feels a hand tug on the hair at his nape. Travis’s thrusts get erratic and Nolan’s hand speeds up, palm rolling over the heads of their cocks at the top of his stroke.

 _“Fuck,”_ Travis curses as he seizes up. 

He comes over Nolan’s hand and stomach and quickly gets one of his own hands between them. His fingers twine with Nolan’s, quickly bringing him over the edge, too. 

Most of their sex isn’t gentle, but it’s _satisfying_ , that’s for damn sure. Travis flops to the side and Nolan’s smiling softly as he catches his breath. 

“Nice one,” Nolan says. “Though after this long you’d think you’d have better stamina.”

Travis doesn’t even bother pointing out that Nolan came about thirty seconds after him. He simply flips him off as he hops off the bed to find something to clean them off. Nolan glares at him, and Travis knows it’s for the audacity of having any energy after an orgasm. He’s heard it before, and it’s not his fault Nolan is a lazy fucker.

When he gets back to the bed and flops down, the smell of the cleaning spray they use in the bathrooms suddenly catches Travis’s attention and he must zone, because when he regains awareness, he has no come on his stomach, has a blanket over his body, and the lights are out. Nolan must have noticed that he zoned, but unless they’re in the middle of something, they don’t really brother trying to jump each other out. It’s never pleasant to be forced out of a zone.

It wasn’t particularly pleasant to zone at all, in the beginning. But the random gaps in awareness have been part of Travis’ life for so long now that it no longer freaks him out unless they’re in the field. It’s just part of the life of a guideless sentinel, their hyperacute senses overwhelming the brain. 

Once again present, Travis turns to loop an arm over Nolan’s hips, pulling his back to Travis’s chest. It’s quiet, warm in ways Travis stopped questioning years ago. 

“So,” Nolan murmurs, softer in the dark. “None of them showed any signs today?”

“No,” Travis says.

He hadn’t felt even a whisper of anything different with any of the eight candidates they brought in for interviews. It’s frustrating. They both were given the serum young, considered sure things from their first years in the program. They passed test after test with flying colors. _With a guide you’ll be unstoppable,_ the director used to say – and still says. No guide’s come yet.

Travis looks across the room, can see clearly through the dark to the other bed in the room. Even these quarters are set up for a sentinel and guide. Sentinels sleep better with their guides in the same room, or so Travis’s been told. Instead, Nolan uses the other bed. First they were temporary roommates at the main facility, after the serum was administered and they moved from the prospect’s campus. It was supposed to be just until he and Nolan found guides. When years passed and they didn’t, they were offered separate rooms. They declined, and not long after, they stopped being paired with anyone but each other on missions. It isn’t the same as having a guide, but they can cover a lot of each other’s weaknesses in the field.

It’s pretty standard for unguided sentinels to be paired up on missions. And nobody has ever been paired in this way as long as Travis and Nolan. They’re good. They work phenomenally together, a product of compatibility and years of partnership. They’re good at controlling their zoning in the field. They have ironclad grips on their wild-running senses relative to most other unpaired sentinels. They have abilities and skills that you can’t just manufacture in a lab. Their field records are stunning. 

They’re still not reaching their full potential, though. 

“What if we never find guides?” Travis rasps out.

Nolan takes a deep breath; Travis can feel it against his chest. “Then we’ll find a way to be the best without them,” Nolan says with absolute conviction. 

Travis’ hand rests over Nolan’s heart. He can smell the change in the other sentinel, the anxiety neither of them can ever truly voice. 

“What… what happens if we _do?”_

Nolan’s throat clicks. He knows they don’t talk about this. They want to be their best more than anything in the world. Travis knows he does. They’re proud to have been chosen for the Sentinel Program and fiercely loyal to their duties – it’s part of the very fabric of who they are, the truth found at the very core of both of them. They can _do_ better for the world if they _are_ better. And they can’t be better together than they could be with guides.

So they don’t talk about this.

Because they don’t have an answer. 

* * *

**MARCH 2020** – UKRAINE

The road beneath the truck is rough and Travis has his legs stretched out in front of him. He’s only half-listening to Nolan going over the mission details with Niskanen, the handler they’ve been working with most frequently since G gave up field work. Instead, Travis is seeing if he can get Crosby to snap before Nolan or Nisky calls him out. 

He forces himself not to laugh at the way Crosby’s shoulders are hunched in, giving him the appearance of a sullen teenager. Malkin’s got a calming hand on the back of his neck but it doesn’t seem to be doing much. It lasts until Travis lets himself zone for the fourth time in half as many hours. 

He’s jolted back to the present by a savage pinch to his arm. 

“Motherfucker! Damnit, Patty!” he says, rubbing his palm over the spot.

Nolan doesn’t even look up from the tablet in his hands.

“Quit trying to work Sid up,” he says. 

“He already thinks we’re incompetent so I’m just completing the picture,” Travis says. 

Crosby rolls his eyes. Next to him, Malkin has his head tipped back and his eyes closed like it’s possible to catch a wink of sleep in this tin shakerbox.

“I don’t think you’re incompetent. Unguided sentinels are just inherently unpredictable. I don’t like unnecessary variables in the field,” he says like the fucking robot he is. 

“He’s not wrong,” Nolan adds like the fucking traitor _he_ is. 

Travis just shrugs and then lets out an oof as they presumably drive over another pothole the size of Lake Michigan. 

“Well that’s what we’ve got Nisky here for,” Travis says, jerking his thumb in the direction of the senior ISB agent. 

“It’s not the same thing,” Crosby insists, leaning back a bit towards Malkin, who cracks an eye open.

The guide looks down towards Crosby and murmurs something in Russian. Crosby lifts a shoulder and says something back in kind. Travis knows five languages, but Russian isn’t one of them, and he narrows his eyes as he tries to decide if they’re talking about him. 

He’s saved from further delightful conversation with the world’s least exciting superhuman as the truck rolls to a stop.

“Finally,” Travis says, following Nolan and Niskanen out through the back doors. 

Outside is a small base of operations. Their target is a couple miles out, and the camp is made up of a number of trucks and tents with various personnel milling around. Travis spies Voracek and a Pittsburgh ops tech whom he vaguely recognizes launching a couple low-profile surveillance drones. The case was kicked to them from Interpol, so he isn’t surprised to see Provorov coordinating with a couple of their agents.

He means to turn towards Nolan to say something about overkill, but his eyes don’t move and a _thu-thump… thu-thump… thu-thump…_ fills his ears. There’s a boy – well, a young man – in an Interpol jacket standing behind a man who’s speaking to Provorov in a slight Canadian accent. The boy has brownish red hair that’s curling neatly over his head, short on the sides. He’s got grey eyes that dart around at a notably quick pace, scanning. 

He doesn’t even tear his eyes away when Provorov moves in their direction. The boy murmurs to the clearly more senior Interpol agent, and he says something back before letting out a laugh. A softer smile hits the younger man’s face, and then he looks over. His eyebrows raise and Travis can hear his words crystal clear from all the way across the clearing. 

“Are those the sentinels?” the boy asks. 

“Yeah, they’ve got sort of a vibe about them don’t they?” the older man says. 

Then Provorov is there and Travis opens his mouth to ask but someone beats him to the punch.

“Who’s that?” Nolan says.

And Travis looks over, sees that Nolan is staring, too. Maybe there’s something wrong with this kid and their heightened senses are picking up on it. Like those dogs that can smell cancer. Maybe the boy should go to the doctor if he’s drawing this much attention.

“Who? The Interpol agents?” Provorov says, glancing over his shoulder at them. “They’ve been working the Hordiyenko cases and called us in. The senior agent’s Elliott and the rookie’s Hart. Why?” 

Nolan doesn’t give an answer, just shrugs and continues to stare.

“Hart’s the one who figured out the Hordiyenkos obtained some sensitive data with their last weapons take,” Nolan remembers from the file. 

“I’m going to go ask him some follow-up questions…” Travis says, and Nolan nods – there’s always something left out of a report.

“I’ll come, too,” Nolan says.

He doesn’t see the way that Provorov raises a brow or the way that Crosby tips his head to the side. 

“Sid and I work more with Interpol. We should be ones to –”

Crosby puts a hand on Malkin’s arm, and shakes his head. Malkin asks something in Russian but Travis ignores it as he follows Nolan towards an open tent where the Interpol agents seem to be looking over some blueprints of the compound that he, Patty, and the Monster will be taking in just a few hours. 

Hart looks up when they get close, eyes going a little wide. 

“You’re the one who noticed the drives were missing?” Travis asks and Nolan rolls his eyes. 

“He means hello. This is Teeks, and I’m Patty,” Nolan says, reaching a hand out. “Sentinels, ISB Tier One.”

“Elliott. You’re friendly for sentinels. Usually you all mind your own business. Fight things and go home,” Elliott says, but seems amused by the change of pace. 

It’s a fair assessment, as Crosby stands with his eyes closed by their truck, presumably in the middle of one of his many pre-mission rituals. Honestly, he and Nolan usually keep to themselves, too. Not today apparently.

“Hart,” the younger agent says and then Travis clasps his hand.

It’s warm, and Travis can feel the ridges of each of his fingerprints. He has an interesting smell about him too that Travis can’t help but hone in on. Maybe he eats a special diet or has a rare blood condition. 

Nolan shakes his hand too, but then seems to forget to let go for a long minute. Elliott tips his head to the side and Hart looks a little nervous. Nolan hasn’t zoned but he’s certainly being weird. Travis raises a brow and waits to speak until Nolan _finally_ lets go – freak. 

“You look a little young to be an Interpol agent,” Nolan says, which makes Elliott chuckle. 

“Hart is special. I found him in the middle of nowhere, Alberta. He has good eyes, so I brought him in– like a lost puppy,” Elliott says and Hart’s face flames. “Anyway, it certainly paid off. Hart noticed the drives weren’t where they should have been. We realized Hordiyenkos took more than just weapons and called the ISB.”

“Is this the layout of the compound?” Nolan asks, looking down at the papers spread across the table, because he has a one track mind like that.

“Yeah. Yes,” Hart says, pushing them in the sentinels’ direction. He looks at Elliott to continue, but the older Interpol agent seems to be deliberately ignoring his signals. Clearly he’s not very used to leading the charge. Travis finds it endearing. “I, uh, think the weapons are… here. We’ll need to catch all Hordiyenko people to get any intel on if they were able to crack the drives or sell any of the info they stole. Also, um, there are other compounds. If they escape they’ll warn the other factions, which is what we want to avoid most.”

It’s not exactly a confident brief but it makes Travis smile wide, earning him a grin in return. Nolan bobs his head as he looks at the map between glances at Hart. 

“So we’ve got to capture all of them alive and make sure nobody calls out before we’ve secured the facility,” Nolan sums up. 

Travis’ heart speeds with excitement. It’s a good mission, and Travis always feels a bit of a rush before an operation like this. This is what everything is about. 

“Sounds fun,” Travis says.

Elliott laughs again – but the sentinel just focuses on the way that Hart’s lips curl upward at the corners. 

Zhenya notices that Sid is onto something pretty quickly. The focus in Sid’s eyes was more than enough to convince Zhenya to let things play out.

Sid’s eyes flick across the camp regularly as he pulls gear out of the truck. He hands Zhenya a set of remote stun charges and then straps a set to his own leg. He tips his head to the side as he pulls his tactical vest over his head and slips a 9mm into the holster at the small of his back. Zhenya follows suit, eyes softening at the familiar motions, heart swelling in his chest. 

He loves working with Sid. He loves seeing the way a steely calm falls over him. He loves the deadly way he moves and the way that _nobody_ is better than Sid, and that together they are the _best._

Really he just loves Sid, too. He knows Sid doesn’t love him in the same way – perhaps doesn’t love that way at all. Sid is special, Zhenya knows. So he’s just happy he gets to be the one who makes Sid the best. Sid notices Zhenya looking at him, eyes crinkling with a little smile in response to the deep grin on Zhenya’s face. 

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing,” Zhenya says. “Excited to be in field. Too long since last mission.”

They both get restless when they’re without a mission for a while. Luckily, due to their record, that doesn’t happen very often.

They walk over to Flower to get the ops details. They study the images on screen from Flower’s drones, but a few minutes in, Zhenya notices Sid’s attention has wavered again. He follows the sentinel’s eye line to the tent that Interpol’s been using,and where Teeks and Patty are still hovering. The younger agent seems to be walking the sentinels through some data and Zhenya can’t hear what they’re saying from here, but he knows that Sid can so he doesn’t interrupt. Flower finishes his report and heads in the direction of one of the vans to check his electrical connections. Zhenya waits until Sid pulls his field phone out of his pocket and begins tapping away at the screen.

“What you doing?” Zhenya asks. 

“I’m messaging Mario.”

Zhenya’s brows raise, confused as to what possible reason Sid could have for messaging the head of the North American Sentinel Program right before they’re deployed. 

“Why?”

Sid finishes his message and then looks back up to where Teeks and Patty are following the Interpol agent over to a set of monitors. 

“Because Agent Hart is guide compatible,” Sid says with absolute certainty.

“Hmm?” Zhenya says, considering, looking back over. “To which one?”

Zhenya is happy for whichever one might get a guide. He knows that they’ve been looking for years and years with no success. It would be a very big deal if Teeks or Patty were paired. But when Sid speaks, Zhenya’s head snaps around.

“Both of them,” Sid says, and the words ring in the air.

Zhenya looks back up, eyes wide as he watches as the two sentinels move closer to Agent Hart. 

* * *

**FEBRUARY 2018** – POLICE STATION – EDMONTON

Carter Hart’s world ended three times by the time he was twenty years old. The third and final time is Riley’s fault. He got caught up in things he had no business getting caught up in,and in one bloody night, Carter loses the very last person in the world who would even report him missing if he ended up in a ditch himself. Carter is left alone, again. 

The interrogation room is chilly. Carter is cold, hollow, even as he recounts the events in excruciating detail. A man with a badge reading Interpol stands on the other side of the table, arms across his chest. He keeps asking questions and Carter keeps answering. His eyes ache, completely empty of tears. He has no more to give. 

He hadn’t grown up with Riley. They weren’t brothers, but he showed Carter how to box, how to not start shit with the wrong people. 

He should have taken his own advice.

At the end of it all, after Carter tells him everything, _everything,_ the man tips his head to the side and narrows his eyes to slits. Then he makes Carter an offer, of all things.

Perhaps the universe hasn’t abandoned him completely. Maybe he still has a chance. At least that’s what he’ll think when his heart stops splitting in two.

“Look,” the man said, palms flat to the metal table, Interpol jacket stretched tight across his shoulders. “I know you have nothing to do with the Hordiyenkos. Your friend got in with the wrong people, and you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. So two ways this can go. You can walk back into Edmonton, a city that clearly hates you, and feel sorry for yourself forever or you come with me and you catch your friend’s murderer and help make the world a better place.”

He pats Carter on the cheek roughly, twice, in a gesture that Carter assumes is supposed to be bracing, but simply stings.

The choice is simple though.

“Fuck Edmonton,” Carter whispers. 

Elliott gives him a tight smile, and nods. 

“Good. Come along, Hart,” Elliott says. “Maybe we’ll find a place for you.”

It opens a whole world to Carter. For the first time since his grandpa died over a decade ago, the twenty-year-old feels like he’s on a path leading somewhere – feels that he’s living for more than the next day, living to be more than a street-rat scrounging around the shittiest neighborhoods in Edmonton. 

And the whole world is a lot wider than Carter would have ever thought. He drinks Elliott’s words like a wanderer in the desert. He consumes _everything_ with the fervor of a starving man.

He finds Riley’s murderer nine months after leaving Edmonton. 

It feels like the end of the first book of his life. It’s the goodbye to Carter, the unwanted, victim of fate.

It’s a hello to Agent Hart. 

* * *

**MARCH 2020** – UKRAINE 

“Which one is the sentinel and which one is the guide?” Carter asks Elliott as he watches the ISB’s Patty and Teeks disappearing into the woods, towards the Hordiyenko stronghold, with another agent they called Couturier. The other two ISB agents had already gone, slipping into the trees like a pair of ghosts.

Carter heard of sentinels before he joined Interpol. To most of the public, they’re considered a sort of conspiracy theory. The kind of thing that comes up at family dinners and during back alley poker games in the same way. _Hussein was killed by sentinels, you know,_ one person would say. _Shut up, sentinels aren’t real,_ someone else said back with just as much certainty. Then another person, more educated, would add, _the ISB exists, but it’s just a covert peacekeeping organization, connected to NATO. The superhuman thing is just a conspiracy._

After joining Interpol, Carter was a little surprised to find out that they _do_ exist, and that pretty much everything he’s ever heard about them is true. He was understandably fascinated. He consumed as much material on them as Interpol had,along with the other topics he devoured like a starving man. 

The reports of the sentinel feats were nearly unbelievable, and Carter still finds it hard to wrap his head around what can be accomplished by so few of them.

Though oddly, what he found most interesting, was the existence of their guides. 

_To fully harness their superhuman abilities, a sentinel must have an unenhanced human guide. This guide acts as a grounding point for the sentinel so that their own sensory abilities don’t overwhelm them._

Carter and Elliott approach the monitor setup manned by a pair of ISB operations technicians that they were introduced to earlier, Fleury and Voracek. They’re muttering to each other in French when Elliott stops and leans over one of their shoulders to look closer at the image on the screen, where the five tracking pins can be seen flashing across a map.

“I don’t know,” Elliott says and then switches to French. “Which one is the sentinels and which one is the guide?”

“Hmm?” Fleury says as he types away at a keyboard. “Oh. The smaller weird one is a sentinel, and the big Russian with him is his guide.”

“The Monster,” Carter confirms. He’d heard about them specifically in a few records, nothing detailed, but just enough for Carter to know that they’re a huge deal in the world of underground intelligence and operations. Fleury nods his head in agreement. “But, uh, I meant the other pair.”

“Yeah, Patty and Teeks. They’re both sentinels. Neither of them have guides so they usually work together,” Fleury says, making a few more adjustments to his surveillance drones. Carter’s eyes strain for the first sign of action. “Niskanen is their handler for now.”

Carter wants to ask more questions but then the other tech interrupts.

“Patty and Teeks approaching from the south,” Voracek says. 

Fleury promptly stops paying attention to Carter and Elliot. He leans forward and tweaks a few more controls. 

“The Monster is inbound from the northeast. I’m triggering the cell jammers. Matty, cut the landlines. We’ve got blackout in three, two, one…”

“Patty and Teeks reaching target now.”

And then anything Carter’s ever read about sentinels is blown right out of the water. Patty and Teeks breach the facility first, opening a side door so their handler can follow. 

“Patty, Teeks, heat signals up on your left,” Voracek says and Carter’s eyes are glued to the screens. 

The surveillance drone has followed them into a small courtyard where a few Hordiyenko men are resting, still armed to the teeth. 

It doesn’t matter.

The sentinels move almost too fast for the drone to catch. Seconds later the men are stunned, cuffed, and tossed into a corner. They’re moving on without hesitation. They take down three more men on the way around the perimeter of the stronghold. 

Then there’s a little flash of light on Fleury’s monitor.

“Geno, I know the electro-charges are fun, but you’re going to draw attention. Then they’ll attack or run,” Fleury says, switching to a different main view. Then he laughs. “I don’t care if this is boring. Sid’s right, stop kicking the anthill.”

Carter’s brow furrows and he quickly realizes the discrepancy. 

“The guide’s alone,” he says, and Fleury glances back. “Where is his sentinel?”

They should be together, right? But Fleury’s display is only on the guide he called Geno, and the map is only showing one red dot in his area. Fleury grins wickedly, eyes still stuck to the screen as he switches views again. It’s a huge central room, with at least fifteen men already bound on the ground. Fleury switches again, and there’s a sentinel moving fast, up a set of stairs. Geno seems to have arrived at the base of the main building, ready to stop anything coming in or out. Carter’s lips are parted. 

Fleury shoots Carter a side-eyed glance, looking a bit gleeful.

“This Monster’s got two heads.”

Carter’s overwhelmed, and his attention is diverted again when Voracek starts talking a little louder. 

“I’ve got a group that’s come across the Monster’s leavings. They’re spooked and moving,” he says. “Headed southwest. Niskanen, get them down there.”

Not a minute later, his mouth goes a little dry as he sees Patty and Teeks come upon the group of fleeing men. It’s two on eleven, but the Hordiyenkos could be a group of two year olds for all the threat they posed to the pair of sentinels. It’s a different kind of shock to see them work together, because even if they don’t have quite the unearthly quality of the Monster’s sentinel, they can keep up with each other and Carter can’t really think of another word for actions except beautiful. There’s almost an exuberance in their movements. The men have guns, but it’s like the sentinels are bulletproof, like they know exactly where the men will shoot before they even fire. Guns hit the ground, men follow. 

Carter swallows hard. 

He doesn’t look up when Elliott’s phone rings. 

He does look up when Elliott begins swearing in what sounds like shock. After about twenty seconds, his mentor hangs up the phone. 

“What’s wrong?” Carter asks, eyes flashing between Elliott and the screens, afraid of what he might see.

But then Elliott doesn’t look worried, just blindsided. He sighs.

“I’m going to need a new rookie,” he says. “That’s what’s wrong.”

* * *

**MARCH 2020** – ABOVE THE ATLANTIC

The three hours after the Hordiyenko sting were an utter whirlwind as Carter’s world was tipped on its axis again. He was ushered into one of the tents before the sentinel units even made it back to their camp. A laptop was set up in front of him and a man on the screen who introduced himself as Mario explained the concept of guide compatibility. He impressed upon Carter the seriousness of the commitment, should he agree. 

“There’s no retirement for sentinels. They can live separated from their guide after the bio-imprint, but they tend not to do well. I know this is a lot, and we wouldn’t need a decision from you now, but we’d be unimaginably grateful if you would at least accompany our teams back to Philadelphia to see if what Sidney observed is correct. Sentinels have extreme power to benefit the world, and finding a guide for either one of Teeks or Patty would be… a boon,” Mario explains over satellite connection as Carter reels. 

He gave Carter time to talk it over with Elliott. It was a short conversation. 

“You’re going,” Elliott said. “I’ll handle the transfer with Interpol and if it doesn’t work out, you’ll always have a place here.”

Carter’s throat worked and he looked over towards the truck the sentinels had arrived in. Teeks and Patty hovered near the back, looking a bit wide-eyed and feral as their eyes locked on Carter. They looked away when Carter caught their eyes. 

“Yeah… I mean, thank you,” Carter said, sobering as he looked back at Elliott. “Thank you.”

Elliott rolled his eyes and gave Carter a one armed hug.

“Good luck, kid.”

Things were a blur after that. A ride in a bumpy van with the ops agents until they reached a covert landing strip in the middle of a field where a simple charter plane sat on the runway. Carter noticed the eyes of the two unpaired sentinels on him constantly, but it seemed like there was always a handler ushering them on. It was actually the big guide, Geno, who waved him down into a spacious seat across a small table at the front of the plane. Carter had never been on a plane with a table in it before… actually, before Interpol, he’d never been on a plane at all.

“Come, sit. We talk,” the guide said with a Russian accent, which was odd considering that Carter had heard him speak with a clean and polished North American accent to one of the runway coordinators before they boarded. 

He didn’t begin to speak immediately though. The guide settled in silently as the engines roared to life and the sentinels donned large earmuffs. Geno’s sentinel partner also put an eye mask on and then seemed to settle in. 

“Plane sounds disorient and bother them,” Geno commented when he noticed Carter’s curious gaze. The plane began to roll forward, faster and faster. “Most sentinels block it out.”

Carter nodded and then looked away as the one they called Teeks gave him a little wave. His head spun and he settled in until the plane got to elevation. 

“So, um…” Carter finally asks. 

“Ah, right,” Geno says, as if he’d completely spaced on the reason Carter was sitting with him. “I’m ask you to sit with me to talk about being a guide. How much you know?”

Carter picks at the sleeve of his jacket.

“I know what Interpol has on sentinels—that sentinels are biologically enhanced and they work with a handler called a guide.”

Geno shakes his head a little.

“Guides are not handlers. Similar, but much more than that. A sentinel is _bio-imprinted_ on their guide,” Geno explains. 

“Bio-imprinted?” Carter’s brow furrows and Geno waves his hand.

“It very science-y and complicated. They create second serum from the guide and give to the sentinel. It enhances and makes the bond permanent. See, not just anyone can be guide. You have to be compatible with that specific sentinel. Just because I’m guide to Sid, doesn’t mean I could be guide for Teeks, or Patty, or probably any other sentinel. Just Sid. Which is why we try to bring you back to ISB with us—Sid thinks you may be compatible with Teeks or Patty.”

Carter’s eyes dart back over to the pair of sentinels. They have a booth to themselves, but sit on the same side. The larger one, Patty, has his legs stretched out to rest on the seat opposite him. His face is unreadable as he stares out the window. Teeks has a blanket tucked up around his shoulders and seems to be resting. 

“Why does your sentinel think I’m compatible with one of them? How will they know for sure?”

Geno shrugged.

“I’m not know what Sid see, but at the Facility you will go through tests. If the tests say you are compatible with one of them and ISB think you are a good fit, then you bio-imprint.”

“A good fit?” Carter asks.

“Make sure you not crazy,” Geno says with a laugh. “Not unheard of to bring in outsiders, but most guides have been in the program and part of the ISB for a lot time. You seem fit and worked with Interpol, so probably can keep up with sentinel in the field with enough training, so don’t worry too much about that part.”

Before Carter can process that, the jovial expression on Geno’s face drops and his tone is much more sober as he continues.

“But that’s not why I’m talk to you. Mario ask me to, but I’m do anyway.”

“What?”

“None of those things matter. I’m suppose to tell you what happens if you _are_ compatible. What it mean to be a guide.”

Carter nods, admittedly a bit intimidated. 

“I’m to tell you right now, that being a guide is forever. You have to know that before you agree. Because the bio-imprint, it only goes one way, you understand?” Geno presses, but unfortunately Carter doesn’t understand.

“I’m sorry, what do you mean?”

“If you agree, your serum is given to the sentinel and it never goes away--but that’s not the same for guides. We must _choose_ stay, because they need us. People outside, some even in the ISB, think guides are only sidekicks, sentinels have all the power. Is not true. A sentinel with no guide is vulnerable, but bio-imprinted sentinel who loses guide? They break. Never the same again. So being a guide, is not just playing special agent until you too weak for the field, retire, get desk job, or leave ISB and start happy family with nice civilian. Have cute house in Alberta with two kids and white fence. Guide is _forever._ ” 

“They make you stay with the sentinel forever?” Carter blurts, a reeling from Geno’s words. 

His heart pounds in his chest as his eyes keep flicking over to the two sentinels no matter how much he tries to avoid looking in their direction. It’s too much. 

“No. Don’t be silly,” Geno says. “Guides not forced to stay… but good guides… they choose to. Understand?”

That’s almost crazier, and yet for some reason, it sort of rights the feeling that gravity had been tipping sideways for Carter. 

“You want to stay with your sentinel forever?”

Geno smiles, warm in a way that Carter hadn’t seen from him yet. It makes him look both older and younger at the same time, like a bright faced child or an old man who’s seen enough to be content exactly where he is. 

“Yes. I’m choose to stay with Sid forever.”

* * *

**JUNE 2004** – NORTHERN FRANCE

“Can you hear them, Sid?” Mario asks as Sid follows on rapid feet, two paces for every one of Mario’s. 

The voices are bouncing around his head and it’s thrilling and chaotic. He’s gotten better at filtering it out in the past six months since they administered the serum and he transferred from Shattuck to the Pittsburgh facility. He still zones constantly, but his aptitude tests are off the charts – and unlike at Shattuck’s, where his success led to some of the other prospects giving him trouble, everyone at the Pittsburgh facility treats him well. In Sid’s opinion, they actually remember the whole point of the sentinel program, of the ISB. They don’t care that Sid, at only age eleven, was given the sentinel serum. They seem to think that Sid’s success is all of their success. 

Or it will be one day, so Mario says. 

“Yeah. I hear lots of voices,” Sid says, head tilted sideways.

The interfacility training camp is being held in Northern France this year. It’s the first time Sid has been to the international camp. The air is warm against his skin and he can feel sweat beginning to prickle at the back of his neck. A solid breeze rolls though the June air, carrying the scent of humans en masse. 

“Really? Even I can barely hear them yet,” Mario says and Sid flushes. 

Mario’s retired, one of the very few sentinels old enough to be. He and his guide, Nathalie, were some of the very first. They changed the world, Sid knows. 

“So we’re going to be splitting your time between the prospects in your age bracket and the group of fresh-turns,” Mario says and Sid nods.

He knows the other fresh-turns are all at least three to six years older than him. He’s used to that. It’s the other kids his age that he’s most worried about. 

“Anyone gives you trouble, find Dupuis,” Mario says and Sid gives another swift nod. “He’ll be with the rookies.”

They come around a curve in the trail and Sid can’t help the gasp that escapes his lips. The Pittsburgh Facility isn’t small, and Shattuck definitely wasn’t anything to scoff at, but each facility only has so many prospects and trainees at a time. His heart races as he sees just how many young people are scattered across the grounds. It’s both exciting and terrifying. They’re all wearing different colors signifying their facility of origin – Washington, London, Los Angeles, Italy, Japan, West Canada, Moscow, Sweden – and Sid tugs on his own black and yellow shirt. 

Determined to not act like the baby everyone thinks he is, Sid quickly makes his way over to the multilingual sign marked U14, where the group is about twenty strong. A pair of coordinators have just arrived and are starting to explain the obstacle course they’ll be working their way through in a number of languages. Sid knows a lot of the point of these international trainings is forcing people to use their languages, but Sid certainly doesn’t envy the coordinators. 

He tries to focus on them, blocking out the rest of the cacophony of the field around him, cutting out the other stimuli one by one, and realizes what he’s doing just before he’d normally zone. He doesn’t, though, and instead his attention wavers. There’s a laugh, a giggle-huffing noise and a snort, and Sid looks over. 

There’s a boy standing at the other side of the group. He’s part of a trio in Moscow blue and reds. He’s taller than some of the other kids even though he can’t be more than a year older than Sid. His hands are big at the end of skinny arms and Sid gets the distinct impression of a Great Dane puppy, just waiting to grow into his paws. 

The boy looks over and normally Sid would look down, but he doesn’t, and the boy smiles at him, gives a little wave. He can hear the boy’s breath coming and going from his lungs and everything else sort of fades out around him – but it’s nothing like zoning. It’s like his mind is quiet for the first time since they gave him the serum, maybe even longer before that. 

Sid can’t bring himself to push through the crowd and say it, though. Every teenager here is a sentinel prospect, and even though it’s not rare for prospects to become guides, it’s hardly the dream of a promising prospect. rom the way that the boy runs the course, he’s more than promising. 

Sid’s stomach twists the whole time he’s waiting for his turn, trying to decide what to do. 

He does his run with his group and they easily secure the fastest time,but that’s hardly surprising, considering he’s the only U14 sentinel and that gives his team a distinct advantage. His group is looking at him with wide eyes as they try to catch their breath at the end of the course – which is when the Russian boy surprises Sid again.

“Вы Sidney Crosby!” the voice has Sid spinning around and all the other voices disappear. “Самый молодой страж!”

The boy said his name, that he’s sure of, but otherwise Sid’s lost. 

“I – I’m sorry,” Sid’s words get all caught up in his throat. “I don’t speak any Russian. Just French and Japanese… and some German… I’m still learning…”

The boy grimaces and gestures to himself.

“Hear some,” he gestures to his ears and then pauses so he can tap his chest. “Talk bad English.”

He looks like he’s genuinely regretful. He looks around and then his face brightens. He gestures for Sid to follow and then jogs towards a group of rookies running sparring drills.

“Seryozha!” the boy shouts and Sid recognizes the man who turns in their direction.

His name is Sergei Gonchar, a training coordinator that Sid knows splits his time between the Pittsburgh and Moscow Facilities. Sergei replies to the boy in Russian, who then says a few sentences rapidly in return. Sergei rolls his eyes.

“You know half the reason they throw these things is so you can learn how to speak each other’s languages?” he says and the boy frowns so Sergei repeats it in Russian.

The boy looks a little cowed, but then says something else and gestures towards Sid. 

“Zhen—Evgeni wants to tell you that your run was amazing and he’s really excited to meet you. He heard about you from me in Russia,” Sergei dutifully conveys. “He thought it was crazy that there was an eleven year old sentinel but now that he’s seen you he understands.”

Sidney’s face is absolutely burning and he wonders if some of the subtlety was lost in translation, or if this boy is really just free with his praise. 

“His run was really good, too. By far the best of anyone I saw,” Sid forces himself to reply, and it’s easier to say if he looks at Sergei and doesn’t look at the boy. 

Sid swears he can smell the happiness on Evgeni. He wants to tell him, say it, but this boy is a stranger. So he doesn’t.

Well he doesn’t for a while. He keeps a white knuckled grip on this suspected secret through two days of training and drills. He doesn’t say what he so desperately wants to through two days of following Evgeni around like a duckling. They get to know each other, through the bridge of gestures and a few English words. Sid still zones regularly, but it’s less than he ever has before. He holds the realization in, doesn’t tell anyone, until some of the Paris Facility prospects get tired of his outpacing and get nasty. Then everything goes sideways. 

They’re in the dining hall. Sid had just offered Evgeni one of his cookies, not caring for oatmeal. One of the older fresh-turns leaned over as he walked past. He slaps a bracing hand down on Sid’s back. 

“Nice run, Sidney. New course record.”

He moves on to join the other rookie sentinels as Evgeni smiles and Sid’s face flushes with the praise. The tender pride doesn’t last. It’s shattered, with just a few words. 

“Just because your dad made you into a science experiment, doesn’t mean you’ll be better than the rest of us in the long run,” one of the Paris prospects spits in rapid French. “All your talent was made in a test tube.”

Evgeni barely speaks English, and he definitely doesn’t speak French, but the stricken look on Sid’s face must be enough.

Enough for him to clock the Parisian prospect in the face with one bony fist, that is. The prospect squeals as Evgeni’s chair clatters across the floor. Evgeni stands over him, spitting out harsh words in Russian, while the older prospect clutches at his face as blood starts to seep out from under his fingers. Coordinators and other prospects swarm around in confusion, which seems like the best time for Sid to turn and look up at the Russian boy and say,“Evgeni, I think you could be my guide.”

The boy smiles, though Sid isn’t sure his words were understood. Of all the possible responses, he just gestures to himself, long fingers splayed out over his chest.

“Zhenya,” he says. “For Sid, no Evgeni. _Zhenya._ ” 

And Sid can’t help but smile.

“Zhenya,” he repeats. 

It’s a whirlwind from there. Mario decides the best thing would be for them to go back to Pittsburgh early. Sid can’t bring himself to question anything until he’s sitting next to Zhenya on a plane headed across the ocean, heartbeat louder than the infuriating hum of the plane engines. Zhenya’s in the window seat, looking down at France shrinking below them. 

“You… you don’t have to do this,” Sid says, fingers curled over his armrests. Zhenya looks over at him. “I don’t know what Mario and Sergei said to you but… they won’t make you if you don’t want to. You could be a sentinel yourself.”

Sid doesn’t know how much Zhenya understands of what he’s saying. 

“You can go back to Moscow if you want,” Sid insists – and for the first time he doesn’t think about the fact that Mario, sitting a few rows can definitely hear him. “Be a sentinel.”

Finally Zhenya smiles.

“Sid best,” he says. 

“What?” 

“Lemieux say you want change world – _can_ change world. Everyone say Sid best. And I almost best,” he says, gesturing to himself. “Together, we be best _ever.”_

He says it with such fierce excitement that Sid can’t help but believe him.

Zhenya turns towards Sid in the seats that neither of them really fill, and their knobby knees knock together. They’re all missized body parts and potential, but there’s a fire in Zhenya’s gaze, and he can feel it reflected back in his own. He can hear the pilots talking to each other in the cockpit,Duper snoring in the back,the engine screaming and vibrating his bones - but overshadowing all of it, Zhenya’s heartbeat and a powerful gleam in his eyes.

Sid nods, and a wild grin spreads over Zhenya’s face. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter two is mostly complete and should be up soon! Comments literally make my life so please let me know what you think!


	2. FILE 002

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to my amazing beta readers! Enjoy!

**THE ANCHORS ARCHIVE.  
** **FILE 002.**

* * *

**SEPTEMBER 2009** – ISB – PHILADELPHIA FACILITY

Nolan doesn’t remember much from before Shattuck, the prep-school like campus that served as the North American arm of the ISB’s youth training network. He remembers a few foster homes in Winnipeg, a hazy rotation of people coming and going from his life for two years. He remembers throwing himself into school, into sports. He remembers his caseworker’s words.  _ I think Nolan is trying to block everything out with school and extracurriculars. I don’t know if it’s considered a good coping mechanism but he shows unusual focus for a seven-year-old… _ He remembers men in black suits interviewing him, asking about his interests, asking him if he’d like to be a part of something. 

Before any of that, all Nolan remembers is blood. No faces, no voices, just… blood. 

It doesn’t matter now. Nolan Patrick isn’t an orphan anymore. Nolan Patrick is one of the top five U12 sentinel prospects in North America. 

The Philadelphia Sentinel Facility is a completely different world from Shattuck St. Mary’s Training Academy. The clean lines of the facility come into view slowly, minutes after Robert drives him through two separate security checkpoints, down a wide road lined with towering oak trees. 

“I… I thought it would feel more… like a city?” Nolan murmurs, as great concrete walls and large glass windows reflect falling leaves. “I mean… are we even in Philly?”

Robert Hooper, the coordinator for the central US Sentinel Program prospects, laughs, loud and open. Nolan likes the man, and has talked to him often during his frequent visits to Shattuck, but he doesn’t so much like being laughed at. 

“We’re just northwest of the Philly city limits. You can hardly run drills or training ops in the city center,” Robert says, which Nolan admits is fair.

He twists his fingers into his brand new black and orange shirt, remembering old conversations with Robert about coming here, to a real Sentinel Facility. 

_ If I’m… well, you said I’m one of the top prospects... so why am I still at Shattuck instead of one of the main facilities? _ Nolan had asked the question on his ninth birthday. Robert brought him an orange hoodie with a black lining and told him he’d grow into it. 

_ Based on our assessments, you have a very competitive nature. We thought you’d most benefit from a few years of training with larger groups of prospects closer to your age.  _

Robert was always honest. Everyone at the ISB seemed to be. Nolan thrived on it. When he was in foster care, he had always hated the way people lied constantly to him. They made things up, gave false hope. It’s not like that in the ISB. 

_ Yes, you’re young,  _ the head of Shattuck told him on his first day at the Academy.  _ But no matter if you become a sentinel, a guide, or any other type of agent or staff, you are part of the International Sentinel Bureau now. One day you will have the opportunity to make the world a better place, and that means you have to  _ **_be_ ** _ better.  _

Nolan remembers clenching his tiny fists into balls, a fierce pride welling up in his chest for the first time. 

Three years later, Nolan got his assignment to a real ISB facility. 

“Are you ready?” Robert asks. 

“Yes,” Nolan says as they drive under a sign that reads  _ International Sentinel Bureau: Philadelphia. _

It really shouldn’t be a surprise at this point, but the first few days at the Philadelphia Facility don’t go exactly how Nolan expected them to go, starting pretty much right away with the director of the facility sitting him down to chat. It begins with introductions, but quickly turns to how his formal education will be run. 

“So we have a few small classes for the on-site prospects, depending on age group and ability. Most of the classes are likely similar to what you’ve experienced at the Academy. But we also have a series of classes that are set up a bit differently. We have a prospect your age who is incredibly talented, and he learns best in a less traditional environment,” he explains. 

Nolan’s brow furrows.“Okay?” he says, unsure what it’s got to do with him.

“Like I said, this prospect’s current statistics are incredibly promising, like yours, and every class benefits from having a few prospects present for collaboration. Plus, I believe that you both could gain a lot from learning in proximity, does that make sense?” the director continues. Nolan remembers Robert’s words about him thriving in a  _ competitive  _ environment. “We have a few prospects who have been flourishing in the class.”

Nolan keeps his head high, unwilling to show his reservations to a man who will probably decide his entire future in the coming years. 

“Yes, sir,” Nolan says, which serves to make the man smile.

“Look, it doesn’t have to be permanent if it doesn’t work for you. We want every prospect to be able to reach their potential, so we’ll talk in a few weeks, okay?”

That’s how Nolan ends up walking into the cleanest classroom he’s ever been in on a Monday morning. There aren’t posters on the walls; instead they’re a plain, pale green color, with high windows that let in a lot of natural light but don’t have a great view of the outdoors. There are a few desks lined up neatly along the back, but the focal point of the classroom seems to be a circle of beanbags and hemispherical chairs that sit low to the ground at the center of the room. There’s a pop-up screen and whiteboard at the front of the circle. The teacher sits in a low chair holding a laptop. 

“Hello! Nolan, right? We’re excited to have you join us. I’m Ryanne. That’s Ashley, Amanda, and Shayne,” she says gesturing to the two girls and the boy settled at the far side of the circle. “And this is Travis.”

The fourth child in the room is settled deep into a beanbag, happily rolling a weird-looking cube around in his palms. He lights up when he looks up at Nolan, an easy smile taking over his whole face. 

“You came from Shattuck, right?” he asks. 

Before Nolan can reply, Ryanne cuts in as she takes a seat with her laptop on the floor. 

“Sorry, I want to get straight through the first sets of practice problems, but we’ll take a break in fifteen minutes and play a couple introduction games. Sound good?” Ryanne says, and all the kids except Nolan nod. She looks up at Nolan, who’s a little shell shocked by everything after the stricter Academy classrooms. “Nolan, do you want to take a seat? We can pull one of the desks up for you if you’d like.”

Not wanting to be the only one at a desk, Nolan takes a seat in the beanbag next to Travis, which earns him another smile. He pulls his own notebook out and grabs one of the padded boards stacked in the middle of the circle, resting it on his knees. Travis has his own journal open on the floor in front of him, wide ruled graph paper where Nolan’s just has horizontal lines. Nolan’s eyes are drawn to the cube in one of Travis’s small hands again, watching the way his thumb rolls back and forth over a silver ball set into one of the sides. 

“What’s that?” Nolan asks while Ryanne hooks her computer up to the screen.

“Hm?” Travis mumbles and then realizes what Nolan’s talking about. “Oh! It’s a fidget cube. I have trouble sitting still and focusing in classes like this.”

Ryanne seems to be struggling to get her laptop to connect, so Nolan takes the opportunity to engage a bit further. He’s undeniably curious about this kid,  _ Travis,  _ who he’s almost completely sure at this point is the prospect the director was talking about. 

“It helps?” Nolan asks, deciding it’s rude to ask exactly why the sentinel program is investing in someone who can’t even sit still through a class. 

“Yeah,” Travis says and then pushes the cube into Nolan’s hand. “It was made for people with ADHD and anxiety and stuff. It’s great.”

Nolan looks at it. He rolls it over his hands, takes in the little thumbstick on one side and the switch on another. He spins the wheel on a third side around a few times. 

“Is that what you have?” Nolan asks as he hands the cube back to its owner.

Travis nods and seems unphased by disclosing the information, so Nolan doesn’t feel bad about asking.

“Well,” Travis qualifies. “Just ADHD for me. That’s Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.”

He adds the longer name when he sees the blank look on Nolan’s face. Honestly, Nolan doesn’t really know what that means either, but it gives him enough to fill in the blanks. 

Ryanne starts muttering and cursing lightly at the machine in front of her. Nolan would find it a little funny if he weren’t so focused on the boy next to him. 

“All this helps, too?” he moves on, looking around the room

“Yeah. I mean, when I was little, I guess the schools thought I was stupid. Apparently one teacher figured it out, though, that I wasn’t, you know, super dumb. Anyway, all my classes have been more like this since the Sentinel Program got me,” Travis explains. 

“Hmm,” Nolan hums, still unsure.

“Even if you don’t have ADHD, though, it’s pretty cool,” Travis insists, as if he senses Nolan’s hesitation. “I mean Amanda is dyslexic, but Shayne and Ashley just like it.”

“Travis!” Amanda cuts in and punches him in the arm. It seems not everyone is as open as Travis.

“Ouch! What? It’s not a big deal,” Travis says, glaring at her but not striking back.

“Hey!” Ryanne cuts in, perhaps a little sharper than she would have had she not been fighting with an uncooperative machine for five minutes now. “Amanda, no hitting. Or - well, no hitting anywhere outside of official practice. Damnit. Alright, everyone, change of plans. We’ll start with some movement. Race to the Red Oak and back while I figure out this damn HDMI cable. First one back gets the first pick of chores later.” 

Nolan is shocked as the other students suddenly leap out of their seats and move towards the side door. 

“Come on!” Travis says, grabbing Nolan’s arm to pull him up.

The door opens and the other prospects wait - apparently there are still rules here. Nolan falls in line. 

“Ready?” Ryanne says absently, still smacking the keys on her laptop with increasing aggression. 

On the one hand, Nolan is a bit overwhelmed by the strangeness of, well, everything since he’s arrived at the Philadelphia Facility. On the other hand, part of his brain is already trying to remember where the Red Oak is. If he follows someone, he can try to over take them on the return trip, he supposes. He looks at his opponents, trying to guess who’s the quickest. 

Travis is the shortest.But for some reason, Nolan doesn’t think he’d bet on him losing. They all crouch low, tensed to spring off their makeshift starting line. 

“Alright. Three, two, one… go!”

* * *

**MARCH 2020** \- ISB - PHILADELPHIA FACILITY

By the time they reach the Philadelphia Facility, Carter is so tired he can barely see straight. He keeps himself as steady as possible, though, just in case this is part of the testing as well. He grits his teeth and squares his shoulders even though he could probably fall asleep on the corridor floor if he laid down. He barely takes in his surroundings, just the general impression of a clean facility with lots of windows, lots of polished concrete and metal. It’s nice, much nicer than the Interpol headquarters, in Carter’s dazed opinion. 

He makes it into a large office where a man with a Quebecois accent introduces himself as Alain Vigneault. He feels the presence of Teeks, Patty, and the Monster standing behind him, but he definitely takes a seat when offered. Only Malkin looks anywhere near as worn as Carter, but then Carter remembers that the guide took down about a dozen Hordiyenko grunts on his own in the past forty-eight hours. 

Carter gives himself the benefit of the doubt, though. He’s had to process a significant amount of mental upheaval since his life seems to have suddenly changed course again. It's a lot to take in.

Vingeault hands Carter a thin tablet and explains that it contains his schedule for the foreseeable future, until they can complete the Guide Compatibility process to its natural end. 

“Unless a mission of very particular need comes up, for now, Sid and Geno will accompany you and serve as a source of information for you while we go through this process.”

“The Monster is staying in Philly? What for?” Teeks pipes up with a furrowed brow. 

Crosby’s expression doesn’t change much but he’s the one that speaks up. “With your and Patty’s unique history, Mario asked us to support in hopes that it goes the best it can.”

“Wants street mutts to finally be adopted,” Geno adds glibly, which makes Patty’s eye twitch and Teeks to flush.

He opens his mouth to respond, but the man behind the desk cuts in before he can speak. 

“And we are  _ happy  _ to take them up on their offer,” Vingeault says, turning back to Carter. “We’d like you to have access to an actual sentinel and guide pair to make sure you have access to the necessary information. We won’t ask for a final decision on whether or not you’re willing to officially join the ISB as a guide until we conclude that you are compatible with Teeks or Patty. Due to the fact that, unlike most of our guides, you were not raised in the sentinel program-”

“Sir,” Patty’s voice cuts the man off.Carter realizes his eyes have gone unfocused. “Can this continue tomorrow morning? It’s late and Hart is exhausted.”

He snaps himself back to the present and looks over his shoulder at the more stoic of the two sentinels he might be compatible with. Patty is difficult to read, and hasn’t said much at all since he returned from his mission. He seems more closed off than he’d been before, and Carter wonders momentarily if Patty is frustrated that the only person he’s ever shown any compatibility with isn’t even an ISB agent. It makes Carter square his shoulders and sit up straighter. 

“I’m fine,” he says quickly, forming his mouth carefully around the words. It doesn’t seem to matter what he says, though, as Vineault is already nodding. 

“I’ll call the staff and get you access to a couple rooms for Crosby and Malkin, and Hart,” Vingeault starts before being interrupted again, this time by Teeks. 

“Hart’s staying with us. I mean, he should,” Teeks amends, “Stay with us, I think.”

Carter blinks at them owlishly, tries to find something to go on in Patty’s face but finds nothing. 

“I think it’s a good idea,” Crosby adds. “It’s a good idea for them to get to know each other and see how Hart meshes with Teeks and Patty, considering the circumstances.”

That makes Teeks flinch, and Carter frowns. He’s only just begun to comprehend the complexity of the situation for the two guideless sentinels. Geno told him how long they’d each gone without any luck and, on top of that, they seem to be partners in their own right. He doesn’t know what he’d say to them, though, besides apologizing for the fact that there’s only one of him. 

“Fine,” Vingeault says. “I’ll have them bring in an extra bed.”

And that’s that.

“What’s the craziest mission you went on when you were with Interpol?” 

Carter’s head spins a bit where he’s sitting at a small table adjacent to a sizable kitchenette. Teeks’ chatting with him as they wait for a bed to be brought in, and Carter isn’t sure where Patty has disappeared off to. He’s pleased, though, that at least Teeks seems excited for him to be here. 

“Um…  _ oh. _ One time there was this huge car chase. Elliott drove on the sidewalk. It was wild,” Carter says -ok,technically Elliott had just bounced up a curb for a minute to get around an old lady in a little Honda, but Teeks doesn’t need to know that. 

The sentinel quarters are good-sized, definitely better than military barracks. Besides the kitchenette, there's a small seating area with a large bookshelf in the corner that’s half-filled up by video games. The bedroom is big, and there’s a full bathroom attached to the main living area. The only thing distinguishing it from a typical small apartment, beyond the utilitarian vibe throughout the place, is the room next to the bedroom that appears to be a modest private gym. 

Teeks looking up is actually Carter’s first indicator that Patty’s returned. He comes back through the door carrying a small duffle bag. He sets it next to Carter, who cocks his head to the side in question.

“I know you didn’t bring a lot to the Ukraine and that most of your things are still at Interpol HQ,” he says, nodding at the smaller duffle sitting by the bedroom door. “This is a bunch of regulation Philadelphia stuff that you can use when you’re here. You won’t need to wear formal clothes or anything when we’re on the campus but that should… well, yeah. Let me know if there's anything else you need or don't have.”

Carter doesn’t miss the way Teeks smirks when Patty seems to lose the plot on his own train of thought. Patty turns away, going to the refrigerator and retrieving a bottle of water. 

“Here,” he says and sets the bottle in front of Carter. “It’s really easy to get dehydrated while flying. The bed will be here in a minute but you should try and drink that before sleeping.”

Teeks snorts.

“He’s a regular adult human, Patty. Just because he’s not a sentinel doesn’t mean he’s a fragile baby,” Teeks says, but also pushes the water bottle a bit closer to Carter. 

Patty rolls his eyes and Carter dutifully opens his water. Back at the refrigerator, Patty is rooting around.

“Are you hungry?” he asks, and Carter just shakes his head, which feels heavier than it should. 

He wishes he’d been able to get some sleep on the flights, but he’d been too keyed up. 

“No… just tired.”

The bed finally arrives, and Carter goes through the motions of getting ready to sleep in an almost robotic daze. When he hits the mattress, he doesn’t even remember stripping down to his undershirt. Strangely, though, when the lights go out, his eyes don’t close.

He hears the other two men get into their beds. Patty’s is kitty-corner to Carter’s and Teeks’ is along the opposite wall. Suddenly, everything hits him all at once. He’s left Europe. Three days ago, he was an Interpol agent with nothing much to lose, and today, he’s in North America again, potentially about to bind himself for life to some needy superhumans. 

And yet he doesn’t feel regret, not at all. That’s maybe the strangest thing. He sees Patty and Teeks fighting their way through a mission in his mind’s eye and his chest throbs with a sort of desperate desire. He doesn't doubt that he wants to be a  _ part _ of this. Still, the craziness of the situation gets to him. 

“I take it back,” he says into the darkness.

“What’s that?” Teeks says. 

“You asked what was the craziest mission I participated in with Interpol. It wasn’t the car chase,” Carter says. “ _ This _ is definitely the craziest.”

It actually makes  _ Patty  _ laugh. It comes once, huffed out, and then again stronger. Carter’s hasn’t heard him laugh yet, and it makes something flutter in his chest again. He really likes the sound of it, a low rumbling thing. Carter’s body shakes with sympathetic giggles. 

“I don’t even know your real names,” Carter continues. 

The room is quiet again but without tension this time, like things have at least momentarily settled.

“My name’s Travis Konecny,” Teeks says. Carter can hear the smile in his voice. 

“Nice to meet you,” Carter chuckles and rolls his head up to look in the direction where he can only assume Patty is lying.

“I’m Nolan. Nolan Patrick,” Patty murmurs, and then adds with a twist of humor, “They didn’t get super original with my solo field tag.”

Carter nods, takes it all in. He turns the names over in his head. Forces himself to write them there in pencil for now, wait on the permanent ink, though it’s difficult for some reason. 

“Ok,” he murmurs, sleep finally creeping back up on him. He sighs, sinks into his pillow. “I’m… Carter.”

He doesn’t remember anything after that. 

* * *

**MARCH 2020** \- I.S.B - PHILADELPHIA FACILITY   
__

The first rounds of tests occur the next morning. The three of them eat breakfast together and it’s strangely peaceful. Travis throws together a pan of boring but serviceable scrambled eggs while rotating bagels in and out of the toaster. Carter hovers around offering to help, and then pokes at his ISB issue tablet once Travis successfully shoos him away. Meanwhile, Nolan stares into his coffee and comes slowly to life . He honestly wants to avoid almost everyone until the dust has settled on this whole situation. He’s sure there’s gossip flying in every direction. You’d think members of a top secret organization would be better at keeping their mouths shut, but Nolan woke up to messages from both Claude and Shayne with questions that he definitely ignored. 

Travis asks Carter more questions, keeping things light, and looks like he’s soaking up every low-toned word. Nolan can’t look away from his pink lips and his soft-bright eyes, or the way his slight but strong shoulders look under the the black Philadelphia Facility t-shirt that he’d put on this morning. It makes something desperate claw up in Nolan’s throat before he swallows it down harshly. He should probably feel like his space has been invaded, even if they are compatible. There should be an adjustment period. But it’s terrifyingly easy for Nolan to see Carter fit into the picture long term. Nolan just has no idea what that picture will end up looking like, no matter how much of a unique energy there seems to be around Carter.

And he can see that it’s the same for Travis. He’s been orbiting Carter like a satellite - or a very overpowered puppy. It would be hilarious if it didn’t make Nolan’s gut twist in confused pain.

Malkin knocks on their door as they’re finishing breakfast to collect Carter for his first interview and preparation for the first round of compatibility testing with Nolan and Travis. 

“See ya later, Carter,” Travis says, leaning onto the back two legs of his chair. 

“Goodbye,” Carter says with a small wave before following Malkin out the door. 

Travis waits until the door closes before he stands up and swings himself into Nolan’s lap, crushes their lips together. He digs his fingers into the back of Nolan’s neck and his thumbs into the bolts of his jaw ,pressing until Nolan’s mouth opens and allows him to slip his tongue inside. Nolan can never resist pushing back. After a short minute, Nolan’s hand twists into Travis’s hair and pulls.

“What are you doing?” Nolan says, keeping Travis a few inches from his lips. 

Travis’s chest is already heaving, his eyes defiant, and Nolan just - he fucking doesn’t want to talk about this. But they should. He looks up at Travis through half-lidded eyes.

“We’ve got at least a half an hour until they need us for the tests,” Travis says and tries to lean forward. Nolan doesn’t let him. The tug sends a shiver through Travis’s body and Nolan’s grip weakens. Travis grinds down on Nolan’s lap until his arms go slack and Travis can bring their mouths back together. He nips hard and licks deep. Nolan feels himself giving up the fight. 

“Look,” Travis says, pressing their foreheads together and catching his breath. He keeps his eyes shut tight, not letting Nolan see what’s there. “Whatever happens is going to happen. It’s everything we’ve always wanted  _ and  _ it’s going to  _ fucking suck _ . So, can we just… enjoy what we can before that?”

Nolan feels Travis’ breath against his lips. It’s… a really fucking stupid plan, but Nolan doesn’t exactly have a better one at the moment. 

“No use worrying about things you can’t control,” Nolan says.

“That’s the kind of motivational bullshit I’m looking for,” Travis replies and closes the distance again.

It’s Nolan who stands up and pushes Travis back towards the bedroom. 

* * *

**_GUIDE COMPATIBILITY TEST 02A28A_ ** _ \- T. KONECNY w. C. HART _

It’s a joke, is what it is. 

“Alright, Konecny. When you’re ready, you’ll enter the room and find five doors to your left, front, and right, for a total of fifteen doors. Behind five of them are controls. Behind one of them is Hart. Low level audio interference will be broadcast during the test,” the handler says. “All you have to do is pick which door Hart is behind.” 

“Got it,” Travis says.

The handler nods and Travis walks to the door. It clicks open and Travis hears a stopwatch start. He walks over the threshold.

And then he keeps walking. He goes straight for the fourth door on the back wall and turns the knob. 

“Hello, Carter,” Travis says.

“Hello, Travis.”

* * *

**_GUIDE COMPATIBILITY TEST 02A28B_ ** _ \- N. PATRICK w. C. HART _

“Now that we’re done with the baseline test, we’ll move on to the No-Scent variation,” the handler says.

Nolan’s lip twitches. He hates the feeling of the gel on his lip and is disgusted by the overpowering stench of menthol and whatever else they put in the odor neutralizing agent that they made Nolan apply below his nose. He definitely prefered round one of this test.

The arbitrary white noise and interference is still playing over the PA system when Nolan enters the room. He goes to the middle of the floor and pauses. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. Last time, he thought he could isolate Carter’s smell; this time, he’s not sure what brings him to the first door on the right hand wall.

But somehow, he has no doubts when he pulls it open. 

Carter is leaning against the back wall of what basically amounts to a closet. He smiles when he sees Nolan.

It’s warm and soft, with just a hint of excitement that makes Nolan’s heart beat slivers into his ribcage.

It’s the same goddamn look he’s seen Travis give Carter since they spotted him across that base camp in the Ukraine - the one Carter’s been giving right back to Travis, too. They clearly get along. There’s  _ something _ there between them, Nolan can tell. Travis looks younger when he’s around Carter. In spite of his outwardly easy-going demeanor, Nolan knows the missions and the years have worn on TK. He knows better than anyone that every once in a while, Travis wakes up in the middle of the night, hyperventilating, sheets clutched in his fists, sweat dripping down his face.

But when TK sits across from Carter at their little table, he looks sixteen again - full of light, desperate for his first mission.

For a moment, Nolan wonders if he can bow out of this race that they’re in - wonders if he can just give this to Travis, since this is going to hurt either way. But then Carter’s eyes crinkle at the corners.

“Hey, that was fast,” Carter says.

And Nolan realizes how badly he needs this as well. Wanting Carter is natural, instinctual. He’s not sure if this desire is real, or just a hint of what real compatibility feels like. It’s more overwhelming than he ever thought it could be; he didn’t think it was possible to have this much hunger in his body, for it to fill him up in a way that it could consume two objects in his mind. It  _ isn’t fair. _

But he wasn’t ever supposed to want Travis in the first place. It doesn’t do the world any good for him to want Travis like he does. That’s just for him, but it’s not something he can keep. 

So, against his feeble will, Nolan lets out a little huff of laughter and nods.

* * *

**MARCH 2020 -** ISB - PHILADELPHIA FACILITY 

After the morning’s tests, Hart is brought in for an in depth interview. Sid and Zhenya are present, officially there to provide support to both Carter and the team.Unofficially, after Sid reported the signs to Mario in Ukraine, Mario insisted the Monster keep a special eye kept on the project. 

The interview is - thorough, in the most generous terms, invasive in the least. Sid understands they have to get a complete profile on Carter before proceeding, since Carter has no ISB records, but he’s uncomfortable for most of the interview, especially when they get to the part where the psychologist begins the list of questions aimed to draw out Carter’s entire life story. Carter doesn’t hesitate to answer the inquiries, seemingly understanding why the ISB needs to know, but Sid still feels like an interloper. 

Because Hart’s story is not exactly a happy story. 

They want Carter to fill out a few questionnaires at the end of the interview, so Sid and Zhenya are given permission to leave. 

“There’s a gym down the hallway to the left. We’ll be there when you get out,” Sid says to Carter as they stand. 

Carter thanks them. He finds them about half an hour later, looking a little tired but none the worse for wear considering he’s just aired out his entire past in front of virtual strangers. 

Zhenya wipes sweat off his forehead and sits up on the pull-down machine he’s been using, and Sid extracts himself from the squat rack. 

“How it go?” Zhenya asks.

“Good,” Carter replies, shoving his hands into his pockets. “They say they have to review, but that there's no reason to worry.”

Well, that’s a great sign. Sid’s sure there’s at least one or two more psych evals in his future before Carter is approved to become a sentinel guide, but it’s definitely a mark in his favor that they told him things went well. 

Carter has already dressed down to work-out clothes somewhere between the interview room and the gym, so Sid catches the hint that they’ll be spending a bit more time here. Carter glances around the room quickly. 

“Where are Travis and Nolan?” Carter asks. Sid doesn’t miss that they’re apparently all on first name terms now. 

“They still have the Ukraine mission debrief,” Zhenya says. Sid and Zhenya did their own debriefing interview during the first round of compatibility tests that morning. “Teeks and Patty will be back at dinner.”

Carter nods and makes his way over to a treadmill to warm up. Sid goes back to his own work out and Zhenya follows suit, heading over to the pulley machine across the room. 

Twenty minutes later, Carter posts up on the abdominal machine next to the incline bench that Sid’s just racked up with weights. He notices Carter’s eyes bouncing between him and Zhenya, who’s roped a young Philadelphia sentinel whom Sid doesn’t recognize into spotting for him on the bench press. 

“What?” he asks.

Carter frowns, his short hair curling with sweat. He looks a bit ridiculous, lying at a decline as he is. 

“Um, I was just noticing that your weights aren’t all that different?” He nods first towards Zhenya’s plate setup and then at Sid’s, which looks pretty similar. “I just thought…”

Sid can’t help but chuckle a little, finishing out his set and sitting up. 

“Sentinels would be stronger?” he confirms that’s what Carter is confused about.

“I mean, I did see you throw a man across a whole room,” Carter defends himself, extracting himself from the machine and grabbing a couple dumbbells. “But your setup looks the same.”

“Well,” Sid says, scratching the back of his neck. “Actually… um. Zhenya was lifting the iron plates?” 

Zhenya has finished up his reps and heads back over to Carter and Sid, who nods towards the red coated plates he’d been using himself.

“These are made of an alloy that’s about twice as heavy as the ones Zhenya uses,” Sid says and Carter’s eyes go wide. 

“You talking shit?” Zhenya says as he wipes his face with a towel.

“He was asking about the plates,” Sid assures Zhenya

“I still strong. Also tall,” Zhenya tells Carter. A fond smile settles onto Sid’s face. “Anyway, I’m go wash up now.”

“Alright. I’ll be in in a few,” Sid says, and looks around for a roller as Zhenya heads towards the locker room. 

“When he leaves, are you guys still…” Carter begins, looking like he’s searching for the right words and having trouble. “Geno said that he can still guide you even when you’re pretty far apart, even if he’s in another room or farther, like on your mission. Is it just because you’ve been together so long?”

Sid wipes his own neck with a towel, tipping his head to the side. 

“Well, there’s definitely a part of it that is a natural affinity and the extent of the compatibility. But it’s also something Zhenya and I have worked on over the years, so by accident and on purpose, time together is a factor,” Sid explains, leaving out the fact that a major reason why they’ve practiced so much over the years is due to the fact that Sid zones almost instantly when Zhenya goes beyond his range.

It benefits them to make that range as wide as possible. 

“Geno said you’ve been together for more than fifteen years, since he was thirteen and you were even younger. Also, I’ve seen a few children around and everyone is talking about how I didn’t grow up in the program like most prospect guides. Is that normal? The ISB has child agents?” Carter asks, looking a little skeptical.

It’s a fair question. 

“They’re not  _ agents _ , but prospects and students. Most of them are actually or functionally orphans. The ISB scouts potentially-gifted children in foster care or under state custody all over the world and works to give them opportunities to join the ISB. Most of them end up in the program between ages five and ten,” Sid explains.

It’s a functional timeframe. Kids who enter or who are still in the system after they enter school are increasingly likely to stay in the system until they age out, so Sidney will one hundred percent stand by the ISB giving kids a different, if non-traditional, alternate path. Much older than ten, though, and they have trouble adjusting to life in the program. Even so, once a child is in the program, no matter how they test and progress, they’ll always have a place in the ISB in some capacity.

“But not you?” Carter says, picking up on the way that Sid seems to have excluded himself from that description. 

Sid huffs a laugh. It used to be a really sore spot for Sid, but twenty-seven years have turned it into an old injury that only acts up on the odd rainy day. He pauses, reaching out casually for Zhenya’s presence beyond his sight, a comforting habit. He figures, after everything he’s heard about Carter’s past today, he can stand to answer this question honestly.

“No. Not me. You’re talking to the ISB's most unsanctioned lab experiment,” Sid says, happy that Zhenya’s in the showers. His guide does not find that joke funny and generally hates this entire topic. “I was basically born to be sentinel.”

Carter raises a brow. Sid isn’t in the habit of telling this story to any stranger but it’s an open secret throughout the ISB, basically common knowledge at this point. Not that people talk about it much anymore; there were a lot more whispers when he was younger, before the experiment - ethics aside -was proven to be an undeniable success. Either way, he’s sure that Carter would have found out at  _ some _ point. Sid decides he'll be the one to tell him, considering the circumstances. 

“My biological father was a research scientist at the Ottawa Facility. His focus of study was on the way some humans are more biologically predisposed to accept the sentinel serum, the way their bodies did more with it. He identified several different gene mutations that were a good indicator of serum receptivity. He actually carried some of mutations himself, which allowed him to go a lot deeper in his research and bypass a lot of regulations and… well, let’s just say that became a habit of his,” Sid says, ignoring the way that Carter’s eyes have become large blue saucers. “He wanted to know if he could assemble all the mutations into a sentinel genetic signature. He worked behind the backs of the ISB for years, keeping what he considered his magnum opus a secret, eventually finding a woman who carried a complementary set of mutations. He convinced to participate in his experiment. They used in vitro fertilization methods...I don’t know how many embryos they screened, but eventually he got the genetic signature he wanted.”

“You,” Carter breathes. 

Sid presses his lips together and picks at his cuticle.

“Yeah. Me. He brought me to Mario, the director, when I was only a few days old. Mario… well, he didn’t know what to do, but he couldn’t leave a baby in my father’s hands. Apparently Mario pretended to be grateful until he signed over custody to the ISB, and then he had my father quietly arrested,” Sid says.

“But… they kept you. Like he wanted,” Carter points out, shoulders curled in a little defensively. 

“It wasn’t a lightly-made decision, I can promise you that,” Sid says off the bat. 

He hears Mario’s voice echoing in his head,  _ Sometimes it still keeps me up, Sid. Sometimes I still think I should have had you adopted by some nice family, given you a chance at a normal life.  _

_ I don’t want a normal life, _ Sid told him, small body full of fire and hunger. 

The older Sid got, the more he felt like there’d been no other choice for him: no matter how he can understand intellectually that what his father did was ethically reprehensible, he still can’t fight that he was made for something. This is what he is, for better or for worse. 

“In the end, it was decided that the potential for doing good in the world world wasn’t worth throwing away for a purely ethical stand. They tightened regulation and oversight to make sure it wouldn't happen again… and they put me in the program,” Sid says. 

“When life gives you lemons...,” Carter says. 

Sid laughs. 

“Yeah, something like that.”

“You don’t wish you had a normal life?” Carter asks. 

Sid had thought about it once or twice when he was younger. It wasn’t really a concept he could even wrap his head around, really.

“All I want to be is a sentinel, and I’m good at it,” Sid says simply. 

He almost expects more questions from Carter, but the boy just nods. 

“You have a place,” he says. “I get that.”

The corners of Sid’s lips twitch into a smile, but it fades as he remembers Carter emotionlessly recounting his formative years. Sid swallows and coughs. 

“Yeah. Anyway, Carter, we better go find Zhenya before he uses up all the hot water in Philadelphia,” Sid says before muttering a mocking idiom in Russian. 

Carter laughs and nods pushing himself off the bench to follow Sid towards the locker room.

“Your Russian…” Carter begins and then seems to struggle for the words.

“What about it?” Sid says with a smile.

“You use it a lot, like, casually, even though Geno seems to be able to speak perfect English like he did at the airport,” Carter explains. Sid’s brows go up, that somehow Carter has already picked up that Geno’s retained accent is more a choice than a limitation. “I just mean, it doesn’t seem like Russian is a second language for you.” 

“Hmm, that’s observant” Sid hums, feeling something funny in his stomach. “And well, you’re not wrong, I suppose…”

* * *

**FEBRUARY 2008** \- ISB - PITTSBURGH FACILITY 

“I’m honestly surprised, Sid. This isn’t like you,” Mario says.

Sid’s sitting next to Zhenya in one of the chairs in Mario’s office. He’s sunk down in his seat and he knows he’s sulking, but he can’t bring himself to stop. Zhenya’s got a wad of tissues shoved under his nose that’s already stained red. 

“I have it on good authority you threw the first punch,” Mario continues. “I don’t know what Wilson said -”

“He called Sid  _ juiced up lab rat, _ ” Zhenya says the words so angrily that a few drops of blood splatter to the floor. His nose is really bleeding. Sid curls in on himself, feeling guilty but still indignant. Mario flinches a little at Zhenya’s report but then settles himself. 

“Geno,” Mario says, using the name Zhenya has been introducing himself with since he arrived in America over a year ago now. “Go to the medical ward and make sure that’s not broken.”

“It fine. I wait for Sid,” Zhenya says without hesitation. 

“You won’t,” Mario says, adding an unusual amount of steel to his voice - at least unusual when turned on Sid or Zhenya. “I’ll have a talk with you later about your  _ continued _ habit of getting into fights with sentinels.”

“Not pick who to fight based on blood,” Zhenya mutters. “Pick based on who is  _ asshole _ …”

“It’s okay, Zhenya,” Sid says in Russian; he’s not fluent yet, but he’s picked up a lot. 

“I’ll go to the medical ward and then come back if you’re not already there, okay?” Zhenya replies in his mother tongue. 

Sid nods. Mario watches the exchange in silence and doesn’t speak until the door is closed behind Zhenya.

“You gave Wilson a pretty serious black eye. And that’s hard to do to a sentinel, even one as new as him,” Mario says. “And I think you broke one of Oshie’s fingers.”

“Well, Oshie hit Zhenya first,” Sid says. That one he stands by. 

“And Wilson?”

Sid shrugs and can’t meet Mario’s eyes. He feels himself losing his pulse on Zhenya. It feels like pulling duct tape slowly off his skin. His shoulders go even tenser. 

“It was like Zhenya said,” Sid says. 

Mario raises an eyebrow and leans back in his chair. Sid notes the blood still on the ground, ruby red under the lights of Mario’s office. It’s stark against the smooth, dark concrete floor. It holds its shape strongly against gravity, perfect little pools with curving edges, reflecting little white highlights in reflection of the overhead lights...

Sid’s not sure how long he zones. Mario waits patiently until he gasps back into reality. Mario cocks his head to the side to make sure that Sid’s really present, waits for him to give a shaky nod before continuing.

“Don’t get me wrong, I will be having some very serious conversations with Wilson about his behavior, but this isn’t the first time that someone said something like that to you, and you’ve never hit anyone because of it before. Zhenya? Yeah, I wouldn't be shocked. But you’ve never started a fight over… well, this. Is something else going on?” Mario asks.

For a minute, Sidney fights the urge to keep his mouth shut. But honestly, he’s just as confused as Mario is about today’s events, so he comes clean.

“This morning, Zhenya and I went in for some diagnostics, and when we were leaving, I heard some of the technicians talking,” Sid says.

“And what did they say?”

“They said - they said it was a  _ shame _ I’d bio-imprinted with a Russian. They said that his accent would limit our use on certain kinds of missions,” Sid said. 

Mario hums, leaning back in his chair. The corner of his lip twitches upwards a little. 

“While versatility is good, you know that’s not exactly the type of mission that your and Zhenya’s training is focused on anyway. Plus Zhenya has lots of time to reduce his accent if we even decide that’s what's best,” Mario says, but there’s something a lot lighter in his face now. “All teams have their strengths and their weaknesses. Even you will Sid. You’ll have to come to terms with that. It’s why we have so many teams in training. It’s better to have a number of specialty tools that are excellent at one thing than it is to have a multipurpose tool that’s mediocre at many things.”

“I  _ know,” _ Sid says, a bit petulant. “But they still weren’t  _ wrong _ . If I was paired with someone from North America, we’d draw less attention on covert ops. It would be one less thing we’d have to compensate for, especially if we travel internationally. People will notice and - well -”

“True,” Mario agrees as Sid burns out.

“So I  _ get  _ that there are pros and cons to me bio-imprinting with Zhenya. It’s fair but I… it just made me so - I was so - ”

“Angry?” Mario finishes. 

Sid nods. 

“But I don’t know  _ why _ ,” he says, fists balled up on his knees and brows deeply furrowed.

He’s shocked when Mario starts laughing at him. He looks up, affronted.

“What?!”

“Oh, Sid. Sometimes I forget… It’s not that complicated. You’re angry because Zhenya is your  _ friend _ and you’re offended on his behalf,” Mario says, and Sid’s world rocks a little bit. 

Or maybe it’s just the motion of everything flipping upright again. Because - 

“Oh.”

“Do you think Zhenya will make a good guide for you?” Mario asks.

“Of course! He could have been a sentinel himself, like - he’s strong, and smart, and can read situations like - ” Sid stops himself but keeps the stony expression.

“I agree. And that’s all that matters, right?”

“Yeah,” Sid agrees. 

“Look, Sidney. Your guide will likely be with you for the rest of your life. Whatever form that relationship takes, it will be the most  _ important _ one in your entire life. Right now, Zhenya is your best friend. That’s a great thing,” Mario says.

The room finally goes quiet for a minute as Mario watches Sid process this new revelation. Sid has never even  _ thought  _ about friends before. It’s always been the program, moving forward, getting better. He supposes he got along with Nate, for the two years they’d overlapped at Shattuck when Mario sent him there for the summers before he got his serum. He and Jack seemed to have similar levels of focus. Sid also likes the new French-Canadian tech-op in training that got transferred to Pittsburgh a few months ago, even if he’s a few years older.

But a true  _ friend? _

“Speaking of that. I didn’t know you’d added Russian to your Ed-Sched,” Mario says, bringing Sid back before he zones on something else. 

“I haven’t. Zhenya’s just been teaching me in our down time,” Sid explains.

Mario nods.

“Well, let me know if you’d like me to get a formal tutor added for you.”

“Okay,” Sid says, but he knows for a while he won’t.

He likes that it’s something that belongs to just him and Zhenya. 

* * *

**APRIL 2020** \- ISB - PHILADELPHIA FACILITY

Carter’s first week in the Philadelphia Facility passes quickly, a whirlwind of tests, exams, and interviews intermixed with training and an ever-increasing familiarity with Travis Konecny and Nolan Patrick. He knows that Travis hates but dutifully drinks the green smoothies that Nolan stocks in the fridge. Nolan claims the smoothies have health benefits, but Carter is pretty sure he just likes watching Travis suffer while drinking them. He knows that both sentinels like to work out after dinner and that Travis always showers first while Nolan goes on a cool down run around the campus. Carter’s started joining him, pushing himself to match the sentinel’s speed, but usually has to bow out before Nolan hits his last lap. 

Carter knows that Travis likes to do a lot of reading about the most random topics on his tablet. Travis never hesitates to explain what he’s reading to Carter, even if it takes a long time or multiple attempts to get a weirder concept across. He’s got a knack for using words that shouldn’t make sense at all, but somehow get the message across in a way that Carter understands.

Carter knows what they look like when they’re sleeping. He catches Nolan’s oddly intense face on the pillow every morning when he wakes up, usually to the sound of Travis digging through his wardrobe. He’s never woken up before Travis, whom he hadn’t expected to be the morning person between the two of the sentinel pair. However, he does catch him passed out on the little couch one evening, slid halfway down the back, one arm hooked over the side, his tablet abandoned on his belly. 

Carter must make a sound because Nolan looks up from where he’s been making them some tea. Carter is still watching when Nolan crosses the room and leans down. For a moment he thinks that Nolan is reaching out for Travis’s face, or maybe his curls - but somewhere along the way his hand drops and gently shakes Travis’s shoulder.

“Hey, Trav, wake up,” Nolan says, quietly. “Go to bed.”

_ Trav.  _ Carter’s noticed that Nolan never seems to use Travis’ first name in public, defaulting to Konecny, Teeks, or TK outside their quarters. The first few days it had still been Teeks inside these walls, but it’s been falling away the longer Carter is with them. 

It reminds him just how long the two have known each other. He wonders what will happen to the sentinel he doesn’t match with - as it’s definitely looking like he’s going to be compatible with at least one of them. He’s not quite sure how normal it is at this point, unfamiliar with the process, but the testing staff says he’s been in the 99.7th percentile for all their compatibility tests so far, for  _ both _ sentinels. They told him the other day that they’ve only had one or two cases not go to lab testing after receiving results like that.

“Why don't you just do a lab test?” Carter had asked on the third day, after watching Travis smell fifty separate rags, three of which Carter had handled. 

It felt silly. 

The tech just laughed. 

“Well. The process costs about one million USD per screening so…” she said, and Carter balked. “So normally we want to be pretty sure there’s a serious chance at bio-compatibility before going through the lab tests. A conglomerate of these tests have a good record of predicting the results of those lab tests, and they’re a much cheaper way to weed out false matches. They’re being even more rigorous with you because, honestly, they were hoping Teeks or Patty would show significantly higher compatibility markers so they could only proceed with a single lab screening.” 

“Is one? More compatible, I mean?” Carter tried to ask. 

“At this point, no. It’s actually blowing the minds of most of the lab and tech teams. Teeks will get up a point or two on one test, but then so will Patty on the next one. The difference in results are statistically negligible and still put them in the top ranges for compatibility. Neither of them has failed a single test or screening…”

The tech had been enthusiastic and even though the details went over his head, he understood that they were still no closer to having an answer for any of them. 

In their quarters, Carter reaches behind himself, tipping his chair back a little so he can grab his tea from the counter and take a sip as Travis grumbles and pushes himself off the couch. He squeezes Carter’s shoulder as he passes.

“Night, C’rt’r,” he mumbles. Warmth spreads through Carter’s chest at the way his name sounds collapsed in Travis’s mouth, at the heat of his hand through Carter’s tee-shirt.

“You should head to bed soon, too,” Nolan says, taking a seat at the table next to Carter. “You have more fitness testing tomorrow morning.”

“I’m more worried about the intelligence test after,” Carter admits. 

He knows he can get through an obstacle course. He’s confident in his strength, and years of finding solace in building on that strength has made him feel pretty prepared for the fitness tests, even if they’re meant to judge if he can keep up with a superhuman. The paper tests and verbal education interviews - that’s a lot more nerve wracking. He’s not stupid by any stretch but his education was hardly prestigious, and college has been long out of reach for him.

“Don’t worry. It’s less about seeing what you can do currently and more about seeing what you have the potential to do,” Nolan says. “You’re not going to get judged on things like not being able to name the powerhouse of the cell. You didn’t even speak  _ any  _ other languages when you joined Interpol, and you’ve picked up quite a bit of Russian, right?” Carter nods his head. “If that’s what you’ve picked up with no formal training, you’ll be fine. That’s the kind of thing they’re looking for.”

Carter looks down, through the translucent, sweetened liquid. The walls of the mug are scratched from years of use. Nolan is the one who found the black tea for Carter, who had picked up a liking for it in Europe. He apparently tends to drink mint himself, and Travis won’t touch any of the stuff. 

“Thank you,” Carter says. 

* * *

**APRIL 2020** \- ISB - PHILADELPHIA FACILITY

“Hey, you’re back!” Travis says with a big smile. Claude looks up from his tablet as Travis and Nolan enter the testing wing. “How’s Ryanne? How’s the baby?” 

“They’re doing great. I’m trying to pull some strings to get you guys some leave passes to come to dinner and meet him,” Claude says. “He’s got to meet my other kids.”

Nolan rolls his eyes but Travis can’t even be mad, already thinking about tiny feet and chubby hands. 

“Awesome,” Travis says.

“Before that though, you have to tell me all about the poor sucker who’s going to be stuck with one of you for life,” Claude says. “What did he do to end up with karma like that?”

“Fuck you, Carter is great,” Travis says. “He was an up and coming Interpol agent. He’s got great field eyes and good instincts, too.”

“He’s doing really well in all the ISB tests,” Nolan adds. 

He’s only known the kid a little over a week, but Travis can’t help the fierce swell of pride in his chest. He knows he could go on, talk about how funny Carter is, once he warms up, how sharp his eyes are, and how he has these  _ lips _ \- but he’s not going to load the gun Claude will definitely use to shoot him. He’s sure it’s already blindingly obvious how gone they are for Carter. 

“About damn time. And you’re really both compatible?” Claude says. 

They nod and Claude runs a hand through his hair.

“Fuck,” he laughs, shaking his head.

That about sums it up. If there’s anyone in the world who might have an inkling of just how ridiculous of a situation they’re in, it’s Claude. He doesn’t have to say more. His tablet pings and he swears again.

“Shit, I was supposed to be priming you for the test. Well, they’ll just have to wait a few more minutes. Alright, so, we’ll actually be running both your trials simultaneously as it involves interpreting Hart’s responses to various images, stimuli, etc. The room is long and separated into three sections. Hart and some techs will be in the center and you and a handler will be behind screens in the other two sections so you can’t see him. Any questions Hart gets asked will be played through headphones and his responses will be written. The handler with you will indicate when each ‘round’ begins. At the end of each round, you will be asked to write what you believe Hart was experiencing. He’ll do the same. The responses will be compared and analyzed afterwards. Make sense?” Claude concludes.

“You’re not going to do anything weird to him, are you?” Travis drawls. 

Claude just winks in response and pushes the door open.

Which is hardly comforting. 

* * *

**_GUIDE COMPATIBILITY TEST 08E55A_ ** _ \- N. PATRICK w. C. HART  _ _  
_ _ & T. KONECNY w. A. HART _

Travis feels better when it turns out that Claude is his handler and can’t interact with Carter at all. He hopes he can keep that going as long as possible; he’d rather Carter not meet a man who is both evil  _ and  _ saw Travis go through puberty. 

They settle, Travis getting in a chair with a tablet in his lap, Claude across from him fitting a pair of headphones over his own ears. Travis can feel Carter on the other side of the screen.

“How you doing, Carter?” Travis calls, leaning back in his chair.

“Good!” Carter calls back. Then, “I’m not supposed to talk!”

Travis laughs and ignores the raised brow that Claude shoots at him. He hears the faint sound of Carter typing on a touch screen.

“Ok, ready to go,” Claude says. “In…”

He counts down with his fingers and then Travis closes his eyes and listens. He inhales deeply, ready to catch any chemical changes in the air. He hears a tiny huff of breath, a faster heart rate. He waits until Claude gives him the signal to write what he thinks happened.

_ Happy. Reacting to something funny.  _

The process repeats. 

_ Content. Relaxed _ .

Then he hears Carter shift, his heart speed again. He doesn’t get out of his chair but he wants to. He glares at Claude. 

_ Stressed.  _

It’s weird, because a lot of the time Travis can’t exactly explain what it is that’s telling him that Carter is feeling one way or another. It’s not any sensory data he can pinpoint. He doesn’t know what makes him write  _ sad _ down on his tablet. It just makes him want to stand up and go around the curtain. He wants to ask Claude if they’re asking personal questions or just showing him one of those Sarah McLachlan sad puppy commercials. He knows better than to fuck up the test, though. 

He almost breaks when Carter gasps. Travis glares daggers at Claude, who raises his hands as if to say  _ we only pinched him _ . And that better be fucking true. He hears Nolan’s heart thumping hard across the room. He adds a note to his response.

_ Pain - and you better not let Patty find out who just did that.  _

He hits submit. 

There are a few more neutral rounds, and then one that starts a pretty aggressive downward spiral. Claude indicates the next round has begun and Travis closes his eyes, leans back. There’s no change for a minute, and then there’s a distinct uptick in Carter’s heart rate. His breath hitches as he shifts, and suddenly Travis gets an overwhelming sensation of growing  _ heat _ . 

Travis swallows hard as he opens his eyes and his face flames. Claude has his lips pressed together like he’s trying not to laugh and Travis wants to fucking kill him. He hears the cough across the room when Nolan figures it out too. 

That’s just what Travis needs, to be able to accurately pick up on  _ these  _ specific signals. He doesn't need to be thinking about  _ this.  _ As if it weren’t already an issue. 

_ Aroused, _ he writes with a shaky hand. 

He wonders what they’re showing Carter on screen. He wonders if his cheeks are flushed and if he’s licked those petal-pink lips.

Now Travis is really happy for the no-talking rule, just so Claude can’t even start. 

_ Finally _ , Claude indicates the round is over and the next one is about to begin. It’s even worse. 

Travis is so thrown by the previous round that actually isn’t paying that close attention for the first minute of this round. When he suddenly hears Carter’s loud gasp, his heart’s frenetic pounding, the stench of fear, he isn’t prepared. He has no idea what he’s doing - except suddenly, his tablet’s on the ground, and he’s pushed the privacy screen halfway across the room where it clatters into the wall. 

“What the fuck?” Claude says as he drops his own tablet. 

Travis freezes right as Nolan comes out from around his own screen, fists clenched and looking ready to fight. Travis isn’t sure if it was Carter or his own scene that’s got him up in arms. It doesn’t matter now, because Carter is sitting in the center of the room with a pair of large headphones over his ears; Crosby, Malkin, and a tech sit wide-eyed across from him. Carter is looking up, pulling the headphones off. He blinks at them, confused, apparently the only one in the room not shocked into paralysis. 

“Um,” he says.

“You’re okay,” Travis says.

It’s not here yet, but Travis knows the crushing embarrassment will be coming. The ISB would never do anything to seriously hurt Carter, physically or mentally, and Travis’s a fucking moron. Carter wrinkles his nose up a bit.

“I, uh, don’t like scary movies,” he says, the words loud in the room. “Sorry?”

Travis finally looks at the screen in front of Carter, where some ugly-ass creature is eating a woman. His eyes flash up and finally meet Nolan’s. He seems to be catching up too. The ridiculousness of the situation hits Travis all at once. 

He starts laughing hard, scrubbing a hand through his hair. Carter smiles too, and Nolan just covers half his face with his hand, the mortification clearly hitting him. 

“It’s okay, Carter,” Travis assures him.

Claude’s got up to join them, slapping a hand down onto Travis’s shoulder.

“Good one, Teeks. I suppose that concludes this test.”

Travis can’t bring himself to feel bad about it. 

* * *

**APRIL 2020** \- ISB - PHILADELPHIA FACILITY

“Hey, I’ll catch up to you guys in a bit,” Nolan tells Travis and Carter as they leave the testing room. “I want to ask Claude something real quick.”

“Okay,” Carter says, and Travis raises a brow but doesn’t comment. 

Nolan turns back to catch Claude as he gets ready to head the other direction.

“G,” he calls and the man turns. 

“What’s up, Patty?” he asks. 

“How’d TK do?” he starts, avoiding the actual topic of conversation. 

“I mean this test takes analytics to generate an actual quantitative score, but it felt like Konecny could see through that screen, you know?” Claude says and Nolan nods. “I take it you felt the same?”

Nolan takes a deep breath. 

“Yeah.”

“Fucking hell. It would have been you two. This would  _ only _ happen to you two,” Claude sighs. 

“Yeah,” is all Nolan feels he can say. “Actually, that’s why I wanted to talk to you. Do you still keep in close contact with the Colorado Facility?”

They sent Claude out there for a few months after he’d decided to exchange field work for coordinating sentinel training and education. Knowing Claude, Nolan’s pretty sure he made friends and probably kept them. 

“Um, yeah. Why?” Claude asks.

Nolan rubs his palm against his jaw and bites the inside of his lip, worrying it a bit.

“If one of us bio-imprints with Carter, I want to put in for a transfer there,” he says, keeping his voice monotone.

Claude’s eyes widen and he stands up straighter, then scowls.“What the fuck? Why?”

“We can’t stay at the same facility, G,” Nolan scowls, face going hot. “Do you know what it’ll be like for the one who doesn’t imprint? With compatibility at this high a level, without an imprint, it’s not a help - it’s a huge distraction. Neither of us can go thirty seconds without looking for him.”

The bio-imprint creates a permanent link from the sentinel to the guide. The sentinel doesn’t have to look, to check, they just know. Nolan had read about it growing up, understood it intellectually, but nothing lived up to the reality. Without the imprint it’s like a sore in the mouth, something you literally can’t stop poking at. 

“Look, we won’t be able to train at the same facility, let alone go on missions together after this. Just because one of us is bio-imprinted, it won’t make that compatibility the other one has for Carter go away. It’s always going to be there. I can’t – we can’t – anyway, the point is that Konecny came to the Philadelphia Facility when he was five. This is the only home he’s ever known, so I’ll be the one to transfer, with or without Carter, however it works out.”

There’s real pain in Claude’s face, pity and sadness that Nolan doesn’t want to see.

“Fuck, Nolan, when did you get so noble all of the sudden? This is your home, too.”

The scent of Travis and Carter is still present in the air; Nolan could follow it like a bloodhound if he wanted. And he does,  _ want. _

“I know,” Nolan says, and then stalks away before Claude can dig into any more weak spots. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are creative fuel. I wish I was self motivated and found satisfaction in the work itself... but instead I crave your words and affection. Working on the third chapter now and it will be up soon! Thank you for reading!! :)

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter two is mostly complete and should be up soon! Comments literally make my life so please let me know what you think! <3


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